Are You In? A Systems-Level Mixed-Method Analysis of the Effects of Quality Improvement Initiatives on Participating and Non-Participating Providers

Child care is an essential support for working families. Licensed family child care - regulated child care that takes place in the provider's own home - is particularly common for children 0-2 years old, children of color, and children from low-income families. States have struggled to recruit family child care providers into quality improvement initiatives. This child care research partnership with the California Department of Education Early Education and Support Division uses surveys and interviews to examine daily life in family child care homes, including when and how family child care providers engage in quality improvement. Specifically, providers in two regions were surveyed, and a subset of providers are being interviewed twice, two years apart, to understand daily life for providers and children, examine what providers do to engage in quality improvement, and examine how engagement in quality improvement changes over time. Since not all providers can participate in the voluntary formal quality improvement initiatives available in these two regions, we study providers who are and are not "in" formal quality improvement initiatives. Working with state partners, we share the findings of this research with practitioners across the state designing quality improvement initiatives for child care providers.