Care Center Staff Research Articles

The Preparation of Child Care Workers:

This paper is based on ethnographic research conducted at an urban school that maintains a day care program. It focuses particularly upon the gulf between the students and the professionals (i.e., day care center staff), analyzing its implications and suggesting ways to solve the problem. To do this it utilizes four anthropological perspectives on the moral ordering of society. The paper examines the wider cultural sources of the training problem and then provides suggestions for its amelioration within programs for the training of child care workers.

Adjustment of divorced-family day care children

This study examined differences in social and cognitive functioning of divorced- and intact-family preschool-age children enrolled in day care. Additionally explored were the relationships of environmental factors such as family and community support and substitute child care to child adjustment. Subjects were 38 divorced-family children (M=4.82 years) and 42 intact-family children ( M=4.82 years) enrolled in three day care centers in a Midwestern suburban community. Parent and child interviews, ratings by day care personnel, and standardized tests were used to gather data. No significant differences in social functioning of divorced- and intact-family children were found. Differences in cognitive functioning favored divorced-family children. Support from extended family was associated with better social functioning of divorced-family children, whereas support from day care center staff was related to better cognitive performance. Findings have implications for research and direct service to divorced-family preschoolage children.

Working with new staff

When a vacancy occurs in the day care center teaching staff, time should be taken in choosing a replacement. It is important that this new staff member fit well into the specific classroom and the whole day care center staff.

A comparison of interest group recommendations in setting day care licensing standards

The recommendations of four groups in setting day care center licensing policy are compared. An examination is made of the recommendations of day care center operators, staff, parents, and licensers on three sets of variables: a proposal for the state to no longer license day care centers, the number of licensing inspection visits required each year, and five categories of child/staff ratios. Only partial support is found for the hypothesis that the four day care interest groups differ in their recommendations. A distinction is made between statistically significant and practically significant differences. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for setting day care licensing standards.

The Denver Prescreening Developmental Questionnaire (PDQ)

To facilitate periodic developmental screening of all children, a Prescreening Developmental Questionnaire (PDQ) was created to identify those children who require a more thorough screening with the Denver developmental Screening Test (DDST). Children positive on the DDST screen are then referred for a diagnostic assessment. To devise the PDQ, 97 of 105 standard DDST items were formulated into questions. Ten age-appropriate questions were answered by 1,155 parents with subsequent evaluation of their children with the DDST. Agreement between parental responses for individual items and the score for their children's corresponding DDST item varied from 68% to 100% (mean, 93.3%). When the PDQ was positive, 31.2% of the children were referred for a DDST screen. These referrals included 86.7% of abnormal and 53.8% of questionable DDSTs among the 1,155 children screened. The predictive value of a referral was 23.3%. The predictive value of a referral did not differ significantly whether the PDQ was answered by a parent or by day care center staff personnel. A subsequent field trial of 1,027 PDQs in private physicians' offices and public health clinics yielded a similar predictive value (24.7%) for a referral. The parents liked the PDQ which took them only about five minutes to answer and the physicians liked the PDQ since it decreased by almost 69% the number of DDSTs they felt obliged to administer.