Applying the Military Model to Improve Child Care in Every State, for Every Child

Just a decade ago, child care in the military was plagued by problems that are all too familiar to civilian families today. After ending the draft and instituting an all-volunteer force in the 1970s, the military experienced significant demographic shifts in its work force that had a direct impact on the demand for child care. The armed services were no longer comprised mainly of single men, but increasingly of career-oriented men and women with children. The military's child care system, however, was not keeping up with the needs of these families. Tens of thousands of children were on waiting lists for care. Many military families could not afford care, even if they could find it. Caregivers lacked training and were so poorly compensated they did not stay in the field long, and the quality of care suffered. As a result, the recruitment, retention, and performance of military personnel were affected, putting military readiness at risk. What happened next shows that it is possible to take a woefully inadequate child care system and turn it around in a relatively short period of time. Prodded by congressional hearings and the enactment of the Military Child Care Act of 1989, the military has achieved a remarkable transformation of its child care system. Today, the U.S. Department of Defense runs the largest employer-sponsored child care system in the country, serving more than 200,000 children daily at 300-some locations in child care centers, family child care homes, and after-school programs. But more impressive than the sheer scale of the system is its success in offering a comprehensive approach that provides high-quality, affordable care. Last year, the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) released a groundbreaking report, Be All That We Can Be: Lessons from the Military for Improving Our Nation's Child Care System, to showcase the military's child care model and to encourage a greater public investment in child care by demonstrating, through the military's successful experience, that it is possible to take an inadequate, fragmented approach to child care and turn it into a high-quality, coherent system that works for families--regardless of income. The military's experience over the past 10 years holds important lessons for policymakers, child care providers, advocates, and others interested in improving child care around the country. By identifying and highlighting the specific ways in which the military achieved its turnaround, NWLC hopes to encourage the use of similar techniques in civilian settings to improve care in every state and for every child. Most important, the military took a systemic approach to reforming child care, evaluating all aspects of the program comprehensively at the outset and developing plans to phase in reforms over time based on realistic goals and timetables. Some of the key lessons from the military's experience are: * Improve Quality by Strengthening Standards and Enforcement. The military has improved the quality of child care by developing basic standards--encompassing health and safety, staff/child ratios, staff training, and other matters--and by rigorously enforcing them through four unannounced inspections every year. On the civilian side, state standards vary considerably and some programs are exempt from any protections. Clearly, states should significantly increase the quality of care by strengthening their standards, as well as by adopting the military's model of a rigorous, unannounced inspection program with meaningful sanctions for noncompliance. * Support Program Accreditation. Today, 99 percent of military child care centers are accredited, compared with 8 percent of civilian child care centers in the United States. Following the military's lead, states should provide more resources to help child care providers go beyond the mandatory minimum licensing requirements and meet higher accreditation standards. …