Nicole Forry

Maintaining Work: The Influence of Child Care Subsidies on Child Care—Related Work Disruptions:

With the passage of welfare reform, support for low-income parents to not only obtain but also maintain work has become imperative. The role of child care subsidies in supporting parents’ job tenure has received little attention in the literature. This article examines the association between receiving a child care subsidy and experiencing a child care—related work disruption using two samples and both cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models. Child care—related work disruptions are found to be less likely among subsidy recipients across samples and methods. Program implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Linking Home-Based Child Care and State-Funded Preschool: The Community Connections Preschool Program (Illinois Action for Children). Evaluation Phase 1-Implementation Study.

Service delivery strategy: Children already enrolled in licensed or license-exempt family child care homes are transported to state pre-kindergarten programs in community-based child care centers for part-day sessions four days per week. On the fifth day, the pre-kindergarten teachers visit the family child care homes—visiting each twice a month--to coordinate curriculum, bring new resources, and discuss children’s progress.

Links Between Patterns of Quality in Diverse Settings and Children’s Early Outcomes

Patterns of quality among approximately 1,400 center classrooms and 350 family child care homes based on measures of global quality, sensitive caregiving, and frequency of language/literacy and math/numeracy activities were examined. Four patterns of quality were identified. Provider education was predictive of higher quality care in both centers and family child care home arrangements. Associations between quality patterns and children’s preschool and kindergarten academic skills were found among children in family child care homes only. Policy and practice implications related to the varying patterns of quality are discussed.