Peer-to-Peer Relationships Raise the Bar

To increase the availability of high-quality child care in North Carolina, The Duke Endowment provided $7 million from 1999–2009 to create model child care centers that offer top-quality care along with training and support for other centers.

Insights

• Many individuals working within the child care profession do not recognize their work as part of a professional industry nor themselves as professionals. As a result, child care providers — especially in rural settings — often place little or no value on professional development as an important part of their work or careers.
• Buy-in from top level administrators or owners is critical. While teachers may be enthusiastic about improving practice, leadership must encourage improvement and be willing and able to budget dollars to support it.
• Building peer-to-peer relationships for training is more effective than a traditional "expert" technical assistance model. Teachers within outreach classrooms were more comfortable and willing to make suggested improvements when they came from other teachers, rather than outside experts.
• In many cases, model center outreach staff found that the centers they served needed to address basic health and safety concerns before other program improvements could begin. In these cases, the plans and goals for the outreach work were adjusted to become more appropriate to each center's needs.
• State-level quality rating systems are valuable. In North Carolina, subsidy reimbursment is linked to the "star rating" system, encouraging centers to improve. The rating system also gives parents a way to evaulate quality, creating consumer demand for improvement as well. In South Carolina, no such rating system exists, so centers do not have the same incentives to improve.

Impact

Four of the five participants created model centers. One site created two centers. Each of the five existing centers has achieved and maintained a five-star license from the state of North Carolina, and three received accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The other two are pursuing accreditation.

The five centers served nearly 600 children in 2007-08, with the number of those with special needs served at each ranging from 10 percent to 36 percent. The percentage of children receiving subsidies at these centers ranged from 23 percent to 100 percent.

In terms of outreach, by 2008 the five existing model centers had provided high-quality outreach services to more than 450 other child care centers that, in turn, served more than 32,500 children.

Three of the model centers worked with other centers to improve their North Carolina star rating, with a success rate of more than 60 percent.

The model centers at Thompson Child and Family Focus and Barium Springs Home for Children have secured ongoing sustainability for their outreach programs by contracting to provide technical assistance on behalf of Smart Start offices in select counties.

Overall, The Duke Endowment believes this initiative created a viable model for improving child care quality, availability and accessibility in North Carolina.

Contact Us

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Vice President
704.969.2140