The family child care trilemma and community development : seeking a balancing strategy

This thesis examines promotion of licensed family child care businesses as a strategy for community development. Accessing high quality, affordable child care is a vital need in low income communities. Often times, however, the care available is of low educational value, prohibitively expensive, or located far from the neighborhood. The research in this thesis examines how community development corporations have innovated to deal with these three challenges. The thesis conceptualizes of child care in terms of the three parties most affected by it-children, parents, and child care providers. Given how the child care agenda is commonly conceptualized and executed the interests of the players are often seen to be in conflict. The tripartite model developed in the thesis analyzes the intimate linkages and delicate balance among the three groups, showing that any interventions that focus on one group -such as improving the quality of care that children receive -affects the well-being of the other groups, often with negative impacts, such as raised parent fees or reduced provider income. In order to create initiatives to address the challenges faced by each group, the thesis delineates three categories of interventions that provide a comprehensive framework for action: professionalism to speak to quality, resources to speak to affordability, and space and place to speak to accessibility. From this research, an emerging best practice for the child care system begins to materialize. The model emanates from the work of a diverse network of organizations and institutions working on child care at various scales from local to regional to national.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Kaminsky, Jenifer Beth, 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Langley C. Keyes.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17686

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17686