What Are the Costs of Operating the Military's Child Care System? PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download What Are the Costs of Operating the Military's Child Care System? PDF full book. Access full book title What Are the Costs of Operating the Military's Child Care System? by . Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 5
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Department of Defense (DoD) provides child care through an impressive Child Development Program (CDP). The CDP is large, currently serving about 176,000 children 6 weeks to 12 years old in 900 child development centers (CDCs) and in 9,200 family child care (FCC) homes nationwide. Despite its large size, the CDP is also a high-quality system. The Military Child Care Act of 1989 was designed to promote quality in CDCs, and it has helped to do so through no-notice inspections, salaries tied to training milestones, and the provision of training and curriculum specialists. Today, virtually all CDCs are accredited. Moreover, the DoD has applied some of the same regulations designed to improve quality to FCC homes. CDC care is also affordable the DoD bases parent fees on total family income, not on child age, the common practice in the civilian sector. Finally, care is widely available. How much does this impressive system cost and how do costs vary by child care setting and by child age? In a recent RAND report, Gail Zellman and Susan Gates addressed these questions, using surveys of CDP directors at 60 installations and at five of seven centers operated for the DoD by contractors, interviewing administrative and human resources staff at civilian employer-sponsored child care centers, and developing cost estimates. Their results focused on the three research questions presented here.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 5
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Department of Defense (DoD) provides child care through an impressive Child Development Program (CDP). The CDP is large, currently serving about 176,000 children 6 weeks to 12 years old in 900 child development centers (CDCs) and in 9,200 family child care (FCC) homes nationwide. Despite its large size, the CDP is also a high-quality system. The Military Child Care Act of 1989 was designed to promote quality in CDCs, and it has helped to do so through no-notice inspections, salaries tied to training milestones, and the provision of training and curriculum specialists. Today, virtually all CDCs are accredited. Moreover, the DoD has applied some of the same regulations designed to improve quality to FCC homes. CDC care is also affordable the DoD bases parent fees on total family income, not on child age, the common practice in the civilian sector. Finally, care is widely available. How much does this impressive system cost and how do costs vary by child care setting and by child age? In a recent RAND report, Gail Zellman and Susan Gates addressed these questions, using surveys of CDP directors at 60 installations and at five of seven centers operated for the DoD by contractors, interviewing administrative and human resources staff at civilian employer-sponsored child care centers, and developing cost estimates. Their results focused on the three research questions presented here.
Author: Gail Zellman
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society
ISBN: 9780833031235
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Department of Defense (DoD) has developed an impressive system for delivering quality child care to the children of DoD empl.
Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child care services
Languages : en
Pages : 64
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 139
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Department of Defense (DoD) has developed an impressive system for delivering quality child care to the children of DoD employees. This system currently provides care to nearly 200,000 children on a daily basis, ranging in age from six weeks to 12 years. To care for these children, the DoD operates Child Development Centers (CDCs) around the world, supports a network of Family Child Care (FCC) homes, and offers before and after-school, holiday, and summer programs for school-age children. The military child-care system is the largest system of employer- sponsored child care in the country, and it has received wide recognition for the high-quality and affordable care it provides. At the same time, the DoD has been under pressure to control expenditures and has explored how the cost of support activities such as child care might be reduced. In the mid-1990s, part of this examination included discussions on the feasibility and potential value of outsourcing military child care. Although the impetus to outsource has waned as policymakers realized that there were limited opportunities for cost savings through outsourcing of child care, given the strict staffing requirements in the delivery of high-quality care, information about the cost of child care remains an important management and policy tool.
Author: Gail Zellman
Publisher: Occasional Papers
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 80
Get Book Here
Book Description
"The evidence presented in this paper questions whether the current U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) system of in-kind subsidies for child care is meeting DoD recruitment, readiness, and retention goals or service member needs in an optimal way. DoD appears to be reaping limited benefits from the substantial subsidies provided to families that use Child Development Centers. Many families cannot or choose not to use the subsidized on-base DoD programs; these families receive no support for child care costs. The authors' findings suggest that the DoD child care system could change in a number of ways to better meet DoD and family needs. First, it could redistribute resources within the current system. Rethinking priority policies from the perspective of both child care need and the degree to which care characteristics fit with likely DoD and service member needs would be another important way to change the system. DoD may also wish to expand the child care benefit to cover more military families and a broader set of child care needs. Alternatively, DoD could expand access to child care through the use of cash benefits, vouchers, and/or negotiated discounts with local providers that meet quality standards, while continuing to provide some amount of DoD Family Child Care homes and Child Development Center care. DoD may also want to invest more resources in assessing the value of child care benefits, as it does for other military compensation components." -- provided by publisher.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Children of military personnel
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52
Get Book Here
Book Description
In the military's child development program, fees paid by parents fund the salaries of caregivers. Federal dollars pay for supplies, equipment, staff training, and some staff salaries. The Air Force is the only service whose centers all meet the accreditation standards of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The hourly cost of child care is about 20 percent higher in Air Force centers than in civilian centers of comparable quality because Air Force labor costs are higher and because a higher proportion of the children are younger than three years old. Adjusting estimated costs to account for differences in age, the cost per child-hour is about seven percent higher in Air Force centers than in civilian centers. The Air Force pays its centers' caregivers an average of $11.20 per hour in salaries and benefits, $1.04 more than civilian centers pay. GAO concludes that, with adjustments for age distribution, the costs of high-quality child care in Air Force and civilian centers are not substantially different.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 79
Get Book Here
Book Description
The U.S. military child care system is the largest employer-sponsored child care system in the nation, widely recognized for providing high-quality care. A range of different settings enables the system to meet military parents' needs for reliable, high-quality care while recognizing parental preferences concerning environment, size (the number of children cared for in that provider setting), and flexibility. Subsidies based on family income ensure affordability. Despite its size, the military child care system serves only a small percentage of eligible families needing child care assistance. Care in Child Development Centers (CDCs) is quite costly for DoD to provide; care for the youngest children is particularly expensive since parent fees are based on family income and not on the cost of care. Care in Family Child Care (FCC) homes is substantially less costly. There is little evidence that the care provided in DoD-run CDCs and FCC homes addresses DoD employer goals of increased readiness, retention, and recruitment. Moreover, families that cannot or choose not to use CDC or FCC care receive no help covering their child care expenses. Moreover, they may rely on care that is mediocre, given their often limited financial resources and the fact that the average quality of care in civilian communities is generally not high. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness asked RAND researchers to use the insight they have gained during several previous studies on military child care to reexamine military child care as a compensation issue and evaluate options for transforming the current military child care system. In this paper, we provide an overview of the military child care system and assess the system's success in cost-effectively meeting DoD readiness, retention, and recruitment goals. In particular, we consider the logic of DoD offering military child care as an in-kind benefit.
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Military Personnel and Compensation Subcommittee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child care services
Languages : en
Pages : 90
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Susan M. Gates
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833039024
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 127
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Department of Defense (DoD) supports the largest employer-sponsored system of high-quality child care in the country. Through accredited child development centers (CDCs), family child care (FCC) homes, youth programs, and other before- and after-school programs, the DoD provides care to over 174,000 military children aged 0 through 12 years. To evaluate the system's ability to meet the child care needs of military families, DoD needs information on the magnitude of potential need. For a number of years, the DoD has been using a formula that translates the basic demographic characteristics of the military population into an estimate of the potential need for child care (see the companion monograph Providing Child Care to Military Families: The Role of the Demand Formula in Defining Need and Informing Policy, MG-387-OSD, by Joy S. Moini, Gail L. Zellman, and Susan M. Gates). The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) asked the RAND Corporation to collect data on child care need and child care use, assess the validity of the DoD formula, and recommend improvements to the formula. Data for the assessment came from a 2004 survey of military families about child care issues. This technical report describes and analyzes the data from that survey. It documents survey methods, defines three outcomes of potential interest to DoD (reported child-care usage, unmet child-care need, and unmet child-care preference), presents detailed results of an analysis of these outcomes among military families, and analyzes the relationships between these outcomes and military readiness and retention. For example, the data identified an important relationship between unmet child-care preference and propensity to leave the military: Families that express unmet child-care preference-that is, they are using one form of child care but would prefer another-are also more likely to report that child care issues might drive them to leave the military. This report will be of interest to officials responsible for DoD child-care policy and other quality of life issues. It should also be of interest to child care managers in other federal organizations, child care researchers, and child care policymakers at the national, state, and local levels who grapple with the issue of estimating the need for child care.
