Latchkey children and school-age child care: A review of programming needs

Abstract

Latchkey children, those children left at home alone when not in school, are increasingly gaining the attention of youth service professionals. Unfortunately, little consistent latchkey research is available by which to guide school-age child care (SACC) program development. In this paper, the authors build upon their research and applied work in the latchkey/SACC field to address issues on which researchers and SACC programmers can work together to increase our understanding of the latchkey phenomenon and contribute to the development of research-based SACC programs.