On-site Child Care Research Articles

If you build it, they will come: parental use of on-site child care centers

Employer-sponsored on-site child care, although a smallpercentage of the U.S. child care market, is of substantial interest to families, firms andgovernments searching for relief from work/family conflicts. This paper analyzes employee surveydata from three firms in the same industry and local labor market, two of which offer on-sitechild care while one does not. These data allow for detailed descriptive and multivariate analysisof the child care strategies of working parents, including primary, secondary and Saturdaycare, and how such strategies are affected by the availability of employer-sponsored on-site care.

School-based child care for children of teen parents: evaluation of an urban program designed to keep young mothers in school

This study examined the effects of the school-based Early Childhood Centers for Children of Teen Parents Program. Designed to keep young mothers in school, the program provides needed support to urban young mothers including free on-site child care for their infants and toddlers, parenting classes, and referral to other service agencies. Archived school record information was collected on teen mothers who participated in the program ( n=81) and on a group of teen mothers who had applied for the program but did not receive services ( n=89). Controlling for pre-service differences, participant mothers were found to have better school attendance and deemed to be at lower overall risk than were the non-participant young mothers. Significant differences were also evident in the graduation rates of these young mothers—70% of the participant mothers graduated, 28% of the non-participant young mothers graduated. Logistic regression correctly classified graduation/drop-out status in 76% of the cases. School attendance, mother's age at birth of the child, and participation/non-participation in the program were significant predictors. Percent core courses passed and average risk scores did not significantly add to prediction. Implications and future areas of study are discussed.

Faculty in the Middle

This study was designed to explore how organizational life in university-affiliated graduate social work education programs in the United States is affected by the stress of heightened caregiving roles. Analysis of data from 69 schools demonstrated deleterious effects of caregiving stress on organizational effectiveness, including missed obligations, feeling overwhelmed, and distracting others by seeking social support for specific problems. The authors identify two variables that provided partial amelioration of caregiver stress and appeared to contribute to increased organizational effectiveness: larger faculty size and on-site child care.

Employer Supports for Parents with Young Children

The competing interests of employers, working parents, and very young children collide in decisions over work schedules, child care arrangements, promotions, children's sicknesses, and overtime hours. With the rising number of women in the labor force, more and more employers are concerned about how their workers balance work and family priorities. This article examines the supports that employers provide to help parents with young children juggle demands on their time and attention. It reviews the availability of traditional benefits, such as vacation and health insurance, and describes family-friendly initiatives. Exciting progress is being made in this arena by leading employers, but coverage remains uneven: Employers say they provide family-friendly policies and programs to improve staff recruitment and retention, reduce absenteeism, and increase job satisfaction and company loyalty. Evaluations demonstrate positive impacts on each of these valued outcomes. Employee benefits and work/family supports seldom reach all layers of the work force, and low-income workers who need assistance the most are the least likely to receive or take advantage of it. Understandably, employer policies seek to maximize productive work time. However, it is often in the best interests of children for a parent to be able to set work aside to address urgent family concerns. The author concludes that concrete work/family supports like on-site child care, paid leave, and flextime are important innovations. Ultimately, the most valuable aid to employees would be a family-friendly workplace culture, with supportive supervision and management practices.

A Model of Voluntary Turnover in State Government

While many researchers have examined turnover in private sector firms, only a few studies have focused on quit rates in the public sector organization This article develops and tests a conceptual model of voluntary turnover in state government. The most significant finding is that state employees are less likely to quit in states with on-site childcare State governments that allow greater internal opportunity for movement are also more successful at retaining employ ees. In addition, state employees who are represented by unions and are better paid are less likely to quit.

Perceptions of the importance of physical setting in substance abuse treatment.

Research indicates that architectural design can provide therapeutic effects. Six setting characteristics are considered of primary importance in health-care facilities: comforts and conveniences, safety, attractiveness, size, privacy, and arrangement/location. This study presents the perceptions regarding these and other setting features held by female clients and staff from a substance abuse treatment facility. Results support the importance of these six setting characteristics in influencing clients' treatment goals. Four other setting variables emerged as important to women's recovery: participation in a residential, drug-free, gender-specific program that provides on-site child care. Attention to these variables may provide facilities with an advantage in today's competitive market for clients.

Balancing Work and Family Responsibilities: Flextime and Child Care in the Federal Government

Our increasingly diverse work force struggles to manage child care, elder care, emergencies, and other personal commitments, while working conditions become ever more important. The federal government must maintain its status and keep the workplace a humane and healthy place (National Performance Review, 1993; 84). The current bipartisan concern for the changing work needs of the American is reflected in Vice-President Gore's National Performance Review. In particular, the increasing presence of mothers in the work force challenges both organizations and employees to find new ways to balance work and nonwork priorities. In 1960, fewer than 19 percent of women with children under 6 years old, and 39 percent of women with children between 6 and 17 years were in the work force. By 1990, the numbers had dramatically risen to 60 percent and 75 percent, respectively (General Accounting Office, 1992; 10). The federal government faces an especially difficult challenge in striking a balance between work and nonwork responsibilities because women's share of the federal work force increased faster than women's share of the private sector work force between 1976 and 1990 (Guy, 1993; 279). Because many women have heavy responsibilities home once the work day is through (Hochschild, 1989), want changes on the job that allow them an acceptable balance between work and life. In addition, because the federal government is the largest employer in the United States, it often serves as a model for private and other public sector employers. A growing number of employers have responded to the changing nature of the work force by offering flexible work schedules, on-site child care, more flexible leave policies, and other benefits. In the past, most employees did not need (or expect) help from employers to enable them to meet their responsibilities. Most workers were men who could concentrate on work because they had support systems home, usually a wife and family (Romzek, 1991; 228). With an increase in the number of two-career families, responsibilities have begun to overlap with work responsibilities. To adjust to these changes, personnel managers will need to rethink how approach their jobs generally and how approach recruitment and retention in particular. Personnel managers will need to change the expectations that have about employees adjusting to the work setting and vice versa. And will have to increase the flexibility of the organization's structure to accommodate new expectations employees have regarding work and nonwork (Romzek, 1991; 232). This article analyzes a large survey of federal employees to assess the impact of government-provided accommodations on federal employees' satisfaction with their work/family balance and their jobs. Our study addresses the following questions. First, do the federal service's family-friendly policies, such as on-site child and flexible work schedules, make for a happier work force? Do these policies affect some employees more than others? Second, which employees are more satisfied with their work/family balance? Third, how important is satisfaction with work/family balance to job satisfaction? Child Care in the Federal Government Although the federal government has more child facilities today than ever before, at present the U.S. has no general policy on child care (Suntrup, 1989; 55). Before 1985, on-site child facilities were not readily available in the federal government. In 1985, Congress passed the Trible amendment(1) which allows agencies to spend appropriated funds to provide space and services for child facilities for federal employees (General Accounting Office, 1992; 86). While the child situation was improved, the costs were still too high for many federal workers to afford (General Accounting Office, 1992; 87). Thus, in 1987, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) alerted agencies to the need for affordable child and dependent in the federal government. …

College-Student Mothers and On-Site Child Care: Luxury or Necessity?

College-Student Mothers and On-Site Child Care: Luxury or Necessity?

Attitudes toward Working Mothers

More women, including mothers, are part of the work force than ever before. In the workplace, barriers often exist that restrict promotion and advancement of mothers. Mothers often are penalized in attempting to meet the demands of parent and worker roles. Parenting practices have been considered primarily the domain of mothers. However, nurturing may be done effectively by fathers or other motivated adults. Policies of employers must change to accommodate needs of families. Examples of supportive practices may include flexible working hours, parental leave, and on-site child care.

Companies earn recognition for child health programs

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Several companies were recognized April 30 at the Corporate Summit for Children for leading the way in establishing maternal and child health programs within the workplace. Companies highlighted for their programs include: • FEL-PRO (Skokie, Ill.): The company, with more than 2,000 employees, provides up to 15 weeks of maternity leave for new mothers and an on-site child care center. In addition, it offers $2,500 in adoption aid.

Occupational Therapy in Australia: A Changing Profession and Changing Attitudes

This article reports the main findings of the Victorian Occupational Therapy Labour-Force Survey in 1986, and compares them where possible with data obtained in a national survey conducted four years earlier by Lansbury.1 Recent socioeconomic changes in Victoria have led to a considerable growth in demand for occupational therapists. The main reserve labour force consists of women caring for dependent children, many of whom would welcome the opportunity to return to work if their needs for flexible hours and on-site child care were catered for. Whilst the changes in patterns of employment and career attitudes could be interpreted as indicators of a decrease in labour-force problems, the profession's continued acceptance of traditional working conditions suggests that problems may be perpetuated rather than alleviated.

Employer-supported child care: Assessing the need and potential support

Three hundred and fifty randomly-selected employees of a large state-supported university were surveyed about the effects of their own and others' child care problems on their work, and about their need for and willingness to support an on-site child care center. Almost half of the respondents reported that their work had been disrupted by child care problems of other employees. A high proportion of employees with children said their work had recently been disrupted by their own child care problems and that many of these disruptions could have been avoided had an on-site center been available. Men were as likely as women to be late, miss work, and leave work early to care for children. Employee support for on-site child care was strong, as indexed by widespread willingness, among all categories of employees, to make a financial contribution to a center. These data suggest that employers should not consider company-sponsored day care as a “special-interest” benefit.

Balancing Parenthood and Employment: Factors Affecting Company Receptiveness to Family-Related Innovations in the Workplace

This article reports findings intended to aid family life specialists and others interested in identifying companies most receptive to the adoption of innovative programs that enhance the balance between work and family life. Officials of 276 Wisconsin companies answered a structured 76-item mail questionnaire designed to survey the prevalence to which selected employer sponsored nontraditional services were offered to employees and the attitudes of nonproviding company officials to the establishment of these services in their firms. More than 2/5 reported that female employees amounted to no more than 25% of their total work forces 28.9% indicated that females comprised between 26% and 50% of all workers and 25.8% had work forces wherein the majority of workers were female. A comparatively high percentage 35.1% of the companies offered flextime options to employees. Nearly 40% permitted employees to take leave to care for sick children and another 30.1% indicated that it was either under consideration or could be considered. The strongest opposition was in response to the provision of on-site child care with 80.% indication that they would not consider providing this service. 54% agreed that child care focused work/family programs involving tax benefits to the employer offer substantive incentives for serious consideration. Small companies compared to medium and large companies were the least likely to have contracted with outside agencies to provide child care services to offer resource or referral services or to offer or consider offering flextime benefits. The findings suggest that employers are likely to be most receptive to proposals involving flextime and part-time work options sick child leave maternity leave and the distribution of printed materials. Change agents working with companies to promote the diffusion of innovations may wish to focus initially on proposals involving these options at least until sufficient credibility has been developed creating opportunities for the proposal of other innovations.

A hospitalʼs on-site child care center proves to make business sense

On-site child care centers in hospitals can improve productivity and reduce absenteeism, tardiness, and turnover. They are also effective recruitment tools and can improve the quality of work performed.

Psychosocial Support of Residents in Psychiatric Programs: A National Survey

All psychiatric residency programs in the U.S. were surveyed in 1979–80 regarding the extent of psychosocial services available to psychiatric residents. This study addressed four questions: (1) What is the availability of different kinds of psychosocial support? (2) Is the availability of this support related to either the geographic region or the size of the program? (3) What patterns of support exist? and (4) What is the range of variation in frequency of night call and length of vacation? On the basis of an 86 percent response rate, the results of this survey showed that the majority of programs offer some services, such as part-time residencies, support groups, as well as the traditional paid sick leave and social activities. However, these results also show that family oriented support services, such as on-site child care for residents who are parents, family support groups, and the availability of financial advisors, were rarely offered.