The Components of Quality Child Care

The Components of Quality Child Care
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The Components of Quality Child Care
Each and every day, millions of parents drop their children off childcare centers, family day care homes or preschool. Usually, the cost, location, values, teachers, and programs offered in a particular child care center influence a parent’s choice of a childcare center. However, the universal component in any childcare center that any parent or guardian wishes for is that their child will have a safe and effectual day in a caring environment. Quality childcare, therefore, is an essential component in the proper growth and development of any child. However, the truth is that very few parents can actually afford the proper kind of childcare they would want their child to receive. As a result, there is a great need for policies and guidelines that provide for the minimum requirements necessary to ensure that every child receives quality childcare (Workman & Ulrich 2017). In order to ensure that the childhood programs children are enrolled in provide quality child care, then some basic guidelines and policies should be enforced. Accordingly, the understudy will discuss some of these necessary requirements.
The basic components of quality child care
All child care programs need to follow the necessary and relevant safety and health practices. These include registering and licensing child care centers and family day care homes, enforcing hygiene practices such as proper hand-washing and sanitation in order to prevent or at the very least minimize the spread of infections. There should also be guidelines for administering required medication to the children in the child care centers and the staff should be trained on the same. In addition, there should also be guidelines for safe sleeping for the infants and toddlers in these homes and centers all over the country.
The staff and teachers working in child care centers should be properly trained in early childhood development. The training and educating of staff responsible for child care is a vital tool for estimating the quality of child care and determining the success of these programs in the long run. Staff training equips the child care providers with the skills required to focus on the individual learning abilities of the children and aids them in appropriately planning for the children’s activities, form bonds with them and stimulate them through conversation, interaction and responsiveness to relationships (Workman & Ulrich 2017).
The amount of attention and time every child requires depends on their age and unique characteristics. In general, however, infants will demand more time and one-on-one attention which will decrease as they grow older, become more independent and are capable of actively engaging in activities in small supervised groups. Therefore, the adult to toddler ratio in childhood care provision centers will have to accommodate for such situation if they are to meet the necessary requirements for providing quality child care (McCain, McCuaig, & Fraser, 2011). Various states provide different requirements in order to meet the adult to child ratio. The Education of Young Children and Zero to Three recommend one adult to every 3 babies or four toddlers while the state of New York requires one caregiver for every four infants or five toddlers.
The Curriculum
The education that children get early in their lives determines their future health, behavior and learning capabilities. As a result, a sound and the well-designed curriculum are necessary through the infancy stages up to when they are able to think more analytically. The structure of the curriculum includes both the content of the learning programs and the learning environment as well. Therefore structural elements such as food, hygiene facilities, furniture and adequate lighting are vital in ensuring that the space set aside for these child care centers is appealing to both the children and their parents.
The curriculum is also used as a guide by stakeholders in the education sector to plan for the routines and schedules to be adapted and used in early childhood caregiving centers. It is also necessary for planning for both the indoor and outdoor activities that the children will be undertaking in order to ensure that they include even the children with special needs. In addition, the early childhood educators can use the curriculum to monitor the progress of the children through the various learning stages as well as track their own progress in administering the required skills. The curriculum also is required to make policies and allocation of resources that match the needs of the children (Scully, 2014).
The curriculum for early childhood education should therefore not be static but should be tailored to fit individual needs and cater to a different situation. The curriculum should be child-based and not adult-based where the children can only take instructions from adults and are not allowed to explore their own creativity and abilities. The curriculum should, therefore, take into account the goals required for proper child development, the materials used, the role of their families and caregivers as well as the experiences that will be acquired through the programs offered by the curriculum.
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