The data in this section are organized around four key issues: (1) the goals of military child care, (2) the organizational environment in which child care is provided, (3) the delivery of child development services, and (4) the amount of care available. We discuss these issues in the context of CDC, FDC, and YA, as each provider operates in very different settings and under very different rules.
Child Care Goals
Child care is provided on military installations around the globe as a means of
addressing important military and family goals. But these goals are multiple
and sometimes inconsistent. The impact of these goals on the provision of
services is often uneven and in some cases may undermine them. The purpose of
military child care was inconsistently described across services,
installations, and individuals. Although respondents generally understood that
child care was not an entitlement, as is the case for medical care, a number of
respondents made the point that personnel had come to expect that the military
would provide them with child care, and would become angry if it were not
available. Said one Air Force enlisted representative, "child care is seen as
an entitlement now, which is why personnel get so upset when they cannot be
accommodated."
The Navy attempted to formally clarify availability expectations through the issuance of a memorandum in October 1990. This document emphasized that child care is neither a right nor an entitlement, but "a service that can be provided to a finite portion of the population, within budget constraints, to promote operational readiness, mission accomplishment and retention." The piece was unique in that it set numerical goals: 100 percent availability for single and dual military parents; 30 percent availability for other families. The goals were subsequently replaced with an approved plan to provide a specified number of spaces by a given date.
Opinions about child care goals varied. Most commonly, child care was described as an important means of enhancing readiness because it decreased the conflict between parental responsibilities and mission requirements. According to an Army general, providing quality care to soldiers' children allows soldiers to focus on immediate job requirements. "Knowing that their kids will be taken care of and develop allows them to be free of worry while they work," he said. Readiness is the key goal of child care, according to a sergeant major, because "everything is tied to readiness, and should be."
An admiral linked the need for child care to the fact that there were many more women in the military than ever before. "It is a fact of life--a good fact of life--that there are women in the Navy, and they have to be helped to be as effective as possible," he said in describing an important goal of child care. An Army colonel saw child care a bit more negatively. In his view, children interfere with the Army's mission; child care helps to reduce that interference.
Many respondents described child care as a quality of life or family support activity, because it allows spouses the opportunity to earn an income and contribute to the family's economic well-being. Child development program staff in several high-cost locations noted that spouse employment was essential. A CDC director in a high-cost area estimated that 90-99 percent of spouses attached to her base work for pay outside the home.
Part-time care and preschool programs support families by providing spouses with opportunities to engage in volunteer work or to continue their education. Such programs also help young children by fostering the development of age-appropriate cognitive and socialization skills.
Some respondents argued that child care serves retention goals as well. Despite the lack of a direct empirical link between child care availability and retention, a number of respondents believed the relationship was there.[3] This view was supported by the oft-heard slogan, "The military recruits single personnel but retains families." Since retention is associated with family well-being, and spouse employment increases family well-being, child care availability promotes family well-being by facilitating spouse employment, according to proponents of this view. This connection between child care and retention seemed true for a Navy enlisted spouse to whom we spoke. In her family, child care is a key service that permits her husband to remain in the Navy. Given her husband's salary, she needs to bring in an income. Without the low-cost child care provided by the CDC to her three young children, she said, "it would make no economic sense for me to work." Her view was echoed by the Head of Child Development Services on that base. She noted that child care is one more benefit that helps retention. "The Navy wants to keep the cream of the crop and needs to keep them," she said.
The possibility that child care may promote retention of other than "the cream of the crop" had not been considered by the above respondent. It had been considered, however, by a Navy commander to whom we spoke, who worried that the availability of inexpensive child care "tacitly encouraged" sailors to become single parents. Few people can be both good solo parents and good sailors, he believes. Such parents often must ask for hardship discharges, which leaves the Navy no return on its investment in their often expensive training.
A number of respondents viewed the goals of child care more broadly. Said a director of family programs, the Army's commitment to child care reflects that "we care about the family." Such concern, he said, often translates into a recruiting advantage. If the Army provides good services to soldiers, "soldiers will do the recruiting for us." He contrasted the many benefits provided by the military--excellent and affordable child care, commissaries, the Post Exchange (PX), among others--with the very limited benefits provided by civilian employers. These services impress young people, he maintained. An Air Force general echoed the Army colonel's views. He noted that the armed services expect a lot of their personnel, and must therefore provide more to their people. "If you want a product and a commitment, you have to take care in return." No one lays the responsibility for general welfare on the civilian employer as the armed forces do on the base commander, he explained. Therefore, he concluded, we have an "institutional commitment" to take care.
Some respondents discussed child care goals from the perspective of the children served. A Marine Corps general noted that an important goal of child care is to foster better and more productive citizens. A poster in a Marine Corps CDC presented this goal in a more self-interested way. It reminded readers that a substantial proportion of today's military children would grow up to serve in the military themselves, a reminder borne out by research (see, for example, Faris, 1981). Other respondents offered similar arguments from slightly different perspectives. A CDC caregiver noted that many of the children in her care spend virtually all their waking hours in the CDC, so that what they receive at the center essentially constitutes their upbringing in their early years. Looked at this way, a critical child care goal must be quality developmental care, she continued. This view was shared by an Air Force policymaker. Another provider, concerned about the limited parenting skills of many of the young junior enlisted parents who use the center, believes that the CDCs provide an important model to parents about how to help their children. Now that the ratios of caregivers to children have been lowered and caregiver training much improved, she said, "our problem is educating our parents."
The above goals apply equally to CDCs and to FDC; FDC has some unique additional goals, including management of excess demand and providing military spouses with opportunities to earn money while remaining at home. To a significant extent, these latter goals are incompatible with the former ones, as discussed below.
YA, which is not a formal part of CDS, increasingly provides child care to young children. The provision of child care is not entirely consistent with longstanding YA goals, which include a strong sports program and a place where young people can get together for informal sports activities. Despite its growing involvement in child care, for at least some of our respondents, the YA recreational focus has not changed. A YA director to whom we spoke told us that one of her biggest problems is the differential expectations of program staff and parents; "these are recreation programs," she said, "even though some parents think it's day care." For program staff, the YA mission is to provide a strong sports program. For many parents, YA is a cheap babysitting service, according to another YA staffer. Some parents, another YA director said, "want more accountability" than the center can offer. They want their children "to be babied" there. But, she noted, these children are not babies. "They have to learn to be on their own." Moreover, she added, some parents want their children to be "educated" at the Youth Center. In her view, the children are being educated in school. The Youth Center is a place for fun and games.
Readiness goals are not furthered in the priorities that the services have established for determining which families receive child care. A concern for readiness would lead one to expect that single and dual military parents would receive top priority for child care slots, as their child care gaps are the most likely to affect readiness. While the Army has established the priority of these families for receiving child care in CDCs, the other services have not done so, although the Navy's October 1990 document stresses the pressing child care needs of these groups and the direct effect of their child care problems on readiness. As the recent IG report (1990) notes, "To ignore the child care needs of this population segment would cause an adverse impact on readiness and retention. Because of this, we believe single military parents should receive priority placement when installation CDCs are at capacity" (p. 6).[4] We encountered considerable opposition to providing single parents such priority.[5]
Child care advocates generally respond to such concerns by noting that over time, the picture of child care utilization looks far more equitable than any snap-shot picture can provide. They note that most personnel (70 percent or more) who remain in the military marry and have children, which makes them potential consumers of child care. Moreover, all workers in a unit are negatively impacted when one worker cannot do his or her share because of lack of child care.
These arguments are less than compelling to everyone. Those involved in other family service programs, nearly all of which are short of funds, point to the large amounts of money necessary to staff and run CDCs. They argue that family services monies should perhaps be more evenly distributed across family programs. Moreover, many families with children do not use military child care. Although our secondary analyses reveal that nearly 83 percent of all families with preschool-age children in the Army Families Survey reported using some kind of child care for more than five hours per week, most did not use military child care. As shown in this section, 17.6 percent were using an Army CDC on a regular basis; 6.9 percent were using family-based care. Nonrelative and relative care accounted for the vast majority of child care.
Others argue that the funds going to serve the small percentage of personnel with children in child care should be used instead to fund programs that serve all personnel, or for which all personnel are eligible. An admiral worried that the large amounts of money (both non-appropriated funds (NAF) and appropriated funds (APF) being taken from MWR for child care were undermining recreation programs and consequently the fitness and readiness of the whole Navy. A Marine colonel shared this concern. Closing down other MWR programs to keep child care going, as he expected to have to do in the near future, seemed unfair to him. An Army general noted, "They [commanders] have an obligation to take care of the entire community. Are we doing the right thing?" he asked, when the base commander takes NAF dollars that come from single soldiers to cover child care. A CDS director described her commanding officer's worries about equity. Only 2 percent of active duty personnel assigned to the base where she currently works are using child development services, she noted. Consequently, while the commander cares about child care, he is torn about providing it more resources. When he gives money to child care he is aware that he is taking money from the much larger group of single and married personnel without children who have no current child care need.
Interestingly, virtually none of our respondents had heard criticisms about the large sums going to child care from parents not using it or from single personnel. Indeed, a few parents told us that their childless friends were surprised about how much they were charged to use the CDC. But many noted that the lack of complaints reflected ignorance rather than acceptance. A chief master sergeant to whom we spoke noted, "Junior people don't know how it (the system of moving NAF dollars around) works anyhow. They put their faith in senior leadership to take care of those issues for them."
Several respondents told us that they had taken pains to conceal the fact that proceeds from other MWR activities were being channeled into the CDC. "If they [nonparents] knew [that MWR proceeds are being spent on child care] they'd be irate," said a Naval commander, who was himself uncomfortable about the practice. When money comes to child care directly from MWR programs, we are, he said, "penalizing 7000 people to benefit 70 [the approximate number of children served in the base CDC at the time of our visit]." A Child Development Services director had not encountered any problems about equity, but actively worked to prevent them. She recently had hosted single sailors for lunch at the CDC, and got a large and enthusiastic turnout.
Concerns about equity led the Navy to investigate whether single sailors were shouldering too much of the cost of child development services. Using their yearly survey of Naval personnel, which includes about one-third of personnel each year, the Navy was able to determine the amount of money that married and single personnel spend at the PX. According to our respondent, the survey revealed that most of the dollars that are spent in the PX are spent by married sailors. Because of this, our respondent believes that it was fair that PX dollars are directed to child care programs.
Other equity issues emerged as well. The Army's policy to accord single and dual military parents first priority for child care slots is viewed by other parents as unfair, according to a sergeant major to whom we spoke. Besides getting first call on available child care slots, their use of the CDC, with its inflexible hours, often allows them to avoid end-of-the-day duties, which fuels feelings of unfairness.
Some equity concerns involve income and rank. A few junior enlisted parents to whom we spoke had not yet been able to use the CDC. They argued that they should have first priority for limited CDC slots, since the higher salaries of senior enlisted and officers allow them more child care options, including expensive civilian care.
The income and rank issue played out in a somewhat different way on an Army installation that we visited. There, high-priority single and dual military parents were using hourly care on a regular basis until a full-time slot became available.[6] Hourly care in this location was limited to 25 hours weekly, which created problems for these parents. These problems were exacerbated when temporary care slots had been pre-booked by organizations to cover child care during meetings and activities. According to the head of CDS on this installation, there is a good deal of resentment about this, as the organizational users tend to be officers' wives, whereas those getting by with hourly care tend to be lower-ranked enlisted personnel.[7]
Organizational Context
Child care is provided in an organizational context that in turn defines,
constrains, and facilitates its delivery. Salient features of that context are
described below.
Many respondents believe that considerable advantages accrue to child care's association with MWR. Primary among them, it was often noted, is that many MWR activities are revenue-generating (golf was often mentioned at this point), and these revenues can be and typically are easily transferred to child development services. As one CDS director put it, "They [MWR] have the most money, and they generate the most money." A commanding officer made this point in talking about an upcoming Air Show. Such shows are very profitable, and some of the profits would be diverted to CDS. However, we also learned of instances where CDS profits had been used to support other MWR activities.
Transfers of funds from golf to child care led many MWR directors to think that child development services belong elsewhere. They argue that monies generated by golf should be used to maintain and improve the golf course, not to purchase toys. An MWR director told us that the standard question in his office these days is, "is there money for [an activity], or did it all go to the Child Development Center?" The resentment in this question goes all the way up to the base commander, he contended.
Other arguments were tendered for maintaining child care in MWR. MWR is a business organization, some respondents argued, and its expertise and experience with the bottom line help child development services directors run their operations more efficiently and cost-effectively. Moreover, since parents pay fees to use CDS, its location in MWR, with its experience in fee collections and in the administration of NAF funds helps CDS as well. At an installation where CDS is in Family Services (FS), the FS head told us that it made more sense to him for CDS to be in MWR, since MWR does the financing and accounting as well as the hiring and firing.
The MWR connection was criticized by many. Some argued that being in MWR had led CDS administrators, MWR administrators, and commanders to expect that CDS should make a profit, just like the other major MWR programs. Such concerns have led CDS to distort its goals and purpose on more than one installation, according to critics of the MWR affiliation. They note, for example, that providing infant care is inherently more costly than serving older children, since the ratio of children to providers must be lower when infants are involved. On more than one installation, these costs, combined with concerns or beliefs that making a profit or at least breaking even were expected, had led to policies that excluded infants from the CDC. While such policies may ironically be beneficial for infants, who experience lower morbidity in family-based care (Johansen, Leibowitz, and Waite, 1988), respondents expressed concern that it was the MWR ethos, not what was good for children, that led to such decisions.
An MWR director argued strongly that CDS cannot be operated under the same principles that govern other MWR activities. She is expected by MWR supervisors to run MWR programs "according to business standards," but because of Congressional mandates and headquarters directives, she cannot run CDS this way. Instead, the latter mandates and directives, which are more child welfare-oriented, push her to run CDS like "a social welfare agency." She would like to see CDS move to Family Services, to be run there without MWR subsidy. Arguments for such placement centered around the similarity of goals and concerns between FS and CDS. Issues of the bottom line would be lacking, and policy could more easily be child welfare-oriented, supporters argued.
Moving CDS to FS had been tried in a few of the installations that we visited. The problems posed by this organizational home were to some degree the obverse of those found in MWR. For example, FS administrators had no experience in collecting or managing large amounts of money. Moreover, respondents noted, FS was a poorly funded enterprise. Without golf courses or bowling alleys to provide supplements to the CDS budget, family programs and child development services were soon fighting over a very small pie.
Further, CDS had little to gain from a move to FS, many argued. The compatibility of CDS and FS is more apparent than real. One FS director argued that FS is essentially a clinical practice, an offshoot of medical services, which provides parenting classes and personal and financial counseling, among other services. As such, it is as inappropriate a place for CDS as is MWR. An MWR director worried that locating the two together could cause potential conflicts of interest, because FS handles child abuse investigations. An admiral concurred, arguing that family advocacy and child development programs should be separately administered to ensure checks and balances.
Even those who were not particularly concerned that CDS was in MWR expressed concern about its placement under Recreational Services in Air Force locations. The fact that the director of CDS reported to a person whose professional expertise was limited to golf or bowling seemed both absurd and frightening to these respondents.
Organizational Location of Youth Activities. As first visualized, YA was a program that offered organized sports and recreational activities, and that provided youth (generally assumed to be considerably older than 5 or 6) a place of their own to hang out and participate in a game of pick-up ball. Its organizational location under Recreation Services on many installations has served to continue this tradition. As a recreational service devoted to "dependents," a family support director told us, it has always been low on the list of priorities for base funding. A YA director on another installation shared this view. He referred to YA as "the black sheep of the family." Each commanding officer has a favorite concern, he added, and YA is rarely the one that anyone picks.
Its low priority at the installation level mirrors its low priority higher up. For example, the people who run YA at the Pentagon are paid less than their CDS counterparts. One respondent attributed this differential to the lobbying skills of the service child care managers, who have worked hard to make CDS a priority. Their stories of problems in CDCs are usually received well, because they concern babies and very young children. Recent child abuse incidents have cemented their claim. "The system can deal with only a few things at once," she noted, "CDS horror stories have put it into the spotlight."
The greater emphasis on safety, staff training, and regulation in CDS has led some respondents to believe that YA should be integrated more closely into the CDS system. A lieutenant colonel who heads Recreation Services on an installation we visited believes that "YA is child care." On that installation, YA is mainly used for after-school care. Therefore, our respondent concluded, YA should be under the supervision of the CDS director. This would improve coordination between the programs, and standardize them. Putting both programs under a separate MWR division would be even better, he added. A CDS director echoed these concerns. She noted that on her installation, the youth centers provide "marginal custodial care." She would like to see YA come under CDS, and to see continuity in programs from birth through age 12. As one respondent noted, such continuity would be consistent with Congressional intent as expressed in the MCCA, which addresses itself to children 12 and under. However, MCCA implementation has focused almost exclusively on young children.
The "warrior" leader may be a dying breed, according to an Army colonel. He believes that commanding generals are selected in part because their views are consistent with those of the current chief of staff. Since child care has been "of the utmost importance" to top Army management for some time, new commanding officers (COs) will increasingly reflect these views.
Whatever the commander's views on child care, commander discretion frees him or her to carry them out. Commander discretion is an important aspect of the military culture, and was frequently discussed by our respondents with regard to the funding of child care programs. The arguments for commander discretion are fundamental to the military endeavor: In the words of one general, "the commander must have discretion to meet his mission." Said an Army colonel at the Pentagon, "Commander discretion is one of the most important parts of this [military] operation." There are times, he admitted, when he would like to dictate policy to commanders, but that is not how the system works. Support for this position was broad-based, and was by no means restricted to uniformed respondents or to people unsympathetic to child care. Fenced funds would in some ways be nice, some child care advocates acknowledged, but they would undermine the military mission. Instead, noted one, "you have to try to bring the commanders along [on the importance of child care]." One admiral walked the line on the issue of discretion and fencing, "it's important that they [commanders] have that leeway. However, we need standards for child care which we can enforce at the same time."
Nevertheless, a number of respondents rued the fact that commander discretion dominated decisions about the ultimate use of funds for child care. Such respondents would like to see an end to the authority of commanders to take funds allocated for child care and use them for other purposes. Said a CDC director, "so much depends on the commander. You can have great planning, but then a new guy comes in [and takes] command and redirects the priorities." We heard from several respondents about an instance where commander discretion overrode child care priorities. In that case, Air Force Headquarters had allocated money for FDC home coordinators at all installations with FDC programs. However, only about half of the installations actually got additional coordinators; on the other installations, the commanders used the money for other things.[8]
At least some of those who would like to see less commander discretion have not sat idly by. A respondent who oversees child care has strategized about ways to reduce discretion. "The trick is to take it [commander discretion] away from them without their realizing it. Ratios, employee qualifications, training standards, health and safety, we've taken it away from commander discretion." Proponents of reduced commander discretion have applauded the MCCA for doing just this, as discussed below.
Frequent commander complaints of "micromanagement" were fueled by the passage in November 1989 of the MCCA, Congress' response to growing concerns about the amount and quality of child development services available to military children. The underlying purposes of the Act are threefold: to improve the quality of child care available, to expand the availability of care to more children, and to make access to child care more equitable.
Key features of the Act include increased training, higher caregiver salaries, a new fee structure based on family income, and a required matching of parent fees with appropriated funds. Higher caregiver salaries were designed to reduce caregiver turnover and improve applicant quality. The new fee structure was designed to increase child care costs for those who could most afford them, and to decrease costs for those who could afford them least. In addition, a fee structure that was consistent across installations would help parents to anticipate and cope with child care expenses. The required 50/50 match of parent fees with appropriated funds was designed to compel the services to view and support child development centers in a new way. By requiring a 50 percent match, Congress was conveying to the services that child care is important and deserving of appropriated funds support.[9] (See Appendix A for additional discussion of the MCCA.)
The DoD first opposed the Act because it was already taking action on several key issues ultimately included in the Act and wanted time to implement the changes. Indeed, prior to the passage of the MCCA, the DoD had issued an Instruction that concerned the need to increase caregiver wages, improve safety procedures in centers, and improve and standardize quality across centers.
Our installation visits coincided with the first implementation of the MCCA. Consequently, almost inadvertently, we came to chronicle important aspects of the implementation process. Because of substantial variation in the speed with which implementation was begun and the long period during which our visits took place, we visited installations that were in all stages of the implementation process, from first questions about the implications of the Act for CDS, to active implementation of many of the Act's provisions.
For many of the people whom we interviewed, the MCCA was the major child care issue. And it was a critical one, as meeting the conditions of the Act required substantial changes in the ways that child development services were funded, organized, and delivered.
Whether or not they supported the goals of the MCCA and believed that it would be beneficial in the long run, respondents generally agreed that the Act was causing problems. Many of those problems stemmed directly from the failure of the Act to appropriate any funds while specifying fairly rapid implementation of many of the Act's provisions.[10] Respondents tended to complain far more about the lack of funds than about the implementation schedule.[11] The lack of appropriation, said an Army colonel, was "a serious blow." Virtually everyone to whom we spoke who was aware of the lack of appropriation expressed anger and concern about the expectation that they would come up with additional funds to comply with the provisions of the MCCA. Attempts to find these funds midyear, according to an admiral to whom we spoke, has led to wholesale robbing of Peter to pay Paul. An Air Force colonel echoed these views. "Congress should have put their money where their mouth is [on the MCCA]," he said. He would like to tell Congress to "give us the money to comply with the provisions mandated."
An Air Force general saw the lack of an appropriation as an opportunity to put his stamp on MCCA implementation. He expressed pleasure about the inconsistencies in the MCCA between what is expected and what resources are available to meet those expectations. "Bluntly," he said, "this inconsistency allows me to make up my own mind" about the way in which implementation will proceed and how fast it will go.
The services have responded to the lack of funds for implementation in different ways. The Marines and the Navy expected installation commanders to find the money themselves. On a Marine base that we visited, this policy was understood by child care administrators to translate into "nothing doing"; they were told to expect no additional funds. The MCCA does not have the force of law, a respondent told us, because no funds were appropriated for it. On a Naval base that we visited, the MWR director planned to close down some money-losing activities, including the auto hobby shop and the bowling alley, to pay for the changes mandated by the MCCA. In a way, he said, MWR is being penalized for its success in organizing and operating the CDC.
The Army has made funds for implementation available from headquarters, but, as noted above, such funds have not always found their way into child development services. However, the Army installations that we visited for the most part had made considerable progress in approaching the 50/50 match. On one installation, the CDS director anticipated that they would be very close to the 50/50 match by the end of the fiscal year. Here, the match was facilitated by money from both Army headquarters and from post funds.[12] Air Force headquarters provided funding for half of the positions required by the MCCA in its FY 1991 budget, with the other half funded in the FY 1992 budget.
The larger the center, the more expensive it becomes to run it, as each new enrollee requires a 50 percent appropriated funds match. This implication of the MCCA had not been lost on many of our respondents. They viewed the requirement for an appropriated funds match as a major impediment to future expansion of child development services. A respondent noted that while the MCCA goal of improved quality may be met, the appropriated funds match, combined with the lower ratios of children to caregivers specified in the DoD Instruction on Child Care (DoDI) are likely to undermine another goal, the expansion of care.
Some respondents doubted that even the first goal, increased quality, would be realized. An Army general noted that the increased wages required under the MCCA would be going to the same people as before, who would now be "overpaid." A Marine Corps major expressed the same sentiment when he said that the CDC will be paying staff more and "for all that we won't show much visible improvement in care."
Another major complaint about the MCCA and the DoDI was the constraint that they imposed on commander discretion. Pay increases, the uniform fee structure, and the appropriated funds match have, in the words of a Navy captain, "hamstrung the commander." An Army general saw the MCCA as another indication that the Congress thought that it could control the military. A high-level respondent sensed another goal on Congress' part. Heavy-handed Congressional management, according to this respondent, comes about because "the people [in Congress] who most like child care most dislike the military, so they want to tie our hands with child care and take money from military activities."
According to an Air Force colonel, such attempts at control are costly in terms of program quality. "we're running a better operation than we could be dictated to provide," he said about CDS on his installation. "The lower down you can run something, the more efficient it can be."
Child care advocates disagree that mandates undermine program quality. Indeed, several to whom we spoke expressed tremendous disappointment that the 50/50 ratio (of appropriated to non-appropriated funds) was a "target" as opposed to a "floor." As a result, they believed, the match was unlikely to be achieved, since, said one, "floors have to be achieved, while targets do not."
Funding for child care will change to some extent in 1992 when a new system is to be implemented. Under this system, Child Development Services funding will be moved out of the general account for base operations into a smaller account earmarked for schools, education, and related programs. In this account, CDS funds will be a line item, but will still not be fenced within that account. This degree of protection of child care funds, will, however, come at a cost. Commanders will no longer be able to transfer money from the base operations' account to CDS, which has become an end-of-year tradition on some installations. Furthermore, line items in the budget are subject to across-the-board cuts.[13] Finally, within the account, the commander can choose to use CDS funds for other purposes, for example, higher education programs.
Regulation of Family Day Care. In contrast to the considerable regulation of CDCs included in the MCCA, FDC was largely excluded from the MCCA legislation. This exclusion continued a pattern in which CDCs receive considerable oversight, whereas FDC receives far less.
The relative lack of regulation of FDC stems at least in part from the uncertain goals of these programs. The uncertainty discussed above about the goals of military child care is magnified and further muddied by concerns about liability and about the relationship of FDC to CDS.
Despite government investment in FDC,[14] many respondents viewed FDC primarily as a spouse employment program, an opportunity, said one respondent, "for military wives to make some money while being able to be with their own young children." Viewed through this lens, FDC deserves no more regulation or oversight than the military requires of those engaged in other private businesses operating out of their military quarters: essentially none. Said a senior enlisted representative who supported this view, "we don't regulate the Avon lady or tell her how much of what kind of lipstick to sell. So we can't do that with FDC either."
But child care is clearly not the same as selling lipstick, a reality acknowledged by most. Indeed, a Marine Corps respondent described an FDC license as "a privilege the CO extends to some Marine families." But fixing on the appropriate type and extent of regulation was difficult for many. The extremes were fairly clearly drawn: some regulation was clearly required, but according full status and full regulation to FDC as part of CDS was unacceptable. Indeed, a service child care manager who began to rethink FDC as "a center without walls" was quickly reminded that liability issues precluded such an approach.
Typically, FDC was regulated to some degree. A colonel who had oversight of CDS described the service's FDC involvement as dealing with certification, with no interest in "the business end." Often, the effects of the regulation appeared to undermine some program goals while supporting others.
Everywhere, ratios of children to providers were regulated and monitored, although such limitations undermined the earning potential of FDC caregivers. Providers are allowed to care for up to six children if no more than two are under two years of age or for three children two years and under. Some respondents regarded these ratios as a strong disincentive to become a licensed provider. At the same time, the amount of money that the caregiver could charge parents was left completely to the discretion of the caregiver and the willingness of parents to pay. We encountered many FDC providers who kept their fees low, in the range of $40-$60 weekly, by calibrating them to those of the CDC.[15] But in some places, the CDC's policy of excluding infants under six months had created such tremendous demand for infant care that FDC fees were close to those charged by civilian providers, running as high as $100 a week or even more.[16]
In a few places with severe shortages of infant slots, a decision had been made to try to regulate the distribution of FDC slots by age. For example, on one Army installation, new FDC providers had to agree to become "infant homes," where only children under two would be cared for. The intent of this policy was to increase the availability of infant care on the installation in response to a long waiting list dominated by infants and toddlers.[17] One effect was to limit the potential income of new providers on this base: as noted above, infant homes may serve a maximum of three children.
CDS personnel on this installation were aware of the disincentive created by requiring providers to become infant homes. At the time of our visit, some thought was being given to helping such providers with a subsidy to compensate for the loss of income inherent in caring exclusively for infants, but no figures had been discussed.[18] Several respondents noted that the amount of any subsidy had to be viewed against the significant subsidization of each child in the CDC, which a respondent estimated to be almost $2000 yearly. The Army has recognized the supply problems that result from low ratios in infant homes. It implemented a six-month subsidy test in four Army communities in Europe in FY 1990 to assess the impact on supply of subsidies to FDC providers who care exclusively for infants.[19] Despite the short time frame and substantial uncertainties about the availability of funding into FY 1991, the test resulted in the creation of an additional 39 slots in FDC homes. According to Army documents, these new slots represented an average increase of 63 percent in the total number of FDC slots available to infants and toddlers and to extended-hours children, suggesting that subsidies hold considerable potential for creating additional FDC slots.
Training requirements for FDC providers vary. In some cases, FDC providers are expected to complete the same amount of annual training as CDC employees, which typically is 24 hours yearly after initial training.[20] But often the level of training required for FDC providers was considerably less. On a number of installations, plans were being made to increase the amount of training required of FDC providers, despite awareness that receiving the training is more difficult for them (CDC employees often can work on training requirements during nap times, whereas FDC providers must devote nights and weekends) and that increased training may create additional disincentives to become involved in the FDC program.
Only rarely was there any discussion of imposing regulations that might build on the inherent strengths of FDC. For example, a CDS director had considered the possibility of requiring all FDC providers to agree to provide at least some overnight and weekend care, with a subsidy for after-hours care that would encourage voluntary caregiver participation.[21] Such care, she contended, was a unique advantage of FDC, and one she would like to see formally made available to parents. In fact, FDC providers often did make such care available, but it was typically done informally and on an as-needed basis. A few caregivers resisted such extra care, arguing that they already worked long hours with little or no assistance. A requirement to provide extra care would cut into their family life and make the provision of FDC services far less appealing.
Regulation of Youth Activities. Although YA provides child care to many young children, it elicits at best a minute proportion of the attention and concern lavished on CDS. And, as one MWR staffer delicately put it, it provides services to children under a set of regulations that are "more flexible" than those that govern CDS.
In the YA programs that we visited, no child-to-staff ratio was in effect, although in formal classes ratios of 15 children to one adult were the norm.[22] The physical plant requirements imposed on CDCs were totally lacking.
Also striking were the differences in training requirements for CDC and YA staff. While CDC caregivers were tackling new training curricula developed in response to MCCA requirements, training for YA staff was minimal at best. A Youth Center director told us that there is no formal training at all for newly hired employees. When a new staff member begins work, the director and her assistant work with the person for what constitutes about a week of orientation. After that, all training is "on the job."
Limited regulation becomes more problematic as younger children are served by YA and its mission shifts operationally from exclusive provision of recreational services to provision of substantial amounts of child care. On a number of the installations that we visited, Youth Activities' child care function had recently been expanded when programs for kindergarteners were moved out of the CDC to make room for more full-day slots.[23] Most children in these programs spend the majority of the day at the Youth Center, as public kindergarten programs rarely extend beyond three hours. In addition, large numbers of early primary children spend several hours daily at the Youth Center in formal or, more often, de facto after-school care. Even when child care is not formally provided through YA, age requirements are falling in many places. On one installation we visited, the minimum age for YA participation had recently been reduced from six to five years.
The striking disparity in the level of regulation between CDS and YA deserves special note because of the often intense concerns expressed by command about the liabilities inherent in providing child care, as discussed below, and because of the increasing numbers of young children being served by YA. Although YA was not designed to provide regular child care, the reality is that a growing proportion of the clientele uses YA services in this way. YA facilities have received none of the infusion of funds that have flowed in recent years to CDCs. The regulatory context for YA has changed little if at all. Whereas the MCCA was allegedly targeted to children from birth to age 12, the vast majority of its mandates and regulations have been devoted to children under five. The enormous concerns about safety and liability that drive a good deal of the regulation of CDCs seem to be curiously absent with regard to YA. Concerns about developmental care and the wish to avoid custodial care, which are centerpieces of new CDS initiatives, are also lacking, or at least seem not to have found their way into YA regulation or practice.
Many of our respondents had thought little about YA, but those who had done so worried about its status, its mission, and the lack of regulation governing its operations, particularly as it assumed new responsibilities for younger children on some installations. A CDS director told us that in her view, it was just a matter of time before YA "generated headlines" about abuse or other serious problems.
The Provision of Child Development Services
Those who provide child development services must contend with a multitude of
difficulties and constraints in staffing, funding, and delivering services.
Some of these problems are exacerbated in military settings, and some are
unique to them.
At the same time as these factors contribute to high turnover, hiring constraints may reduce the numbers or quality of caregivers available to the CDC. In some locations, particularly overseas, a high cost of living, limited numbers of accompanied tours, and low salaries for caregiver positions (typically less than $5 hourly) have combined to make it difficult to recruit qualified staff.[24] Spouse preference reduces CDC director discretion in selecting the most qualified and stable staff. Finally, overseas, rules governing the hiring of in-country personnel limit director discretion.
As a means of reducing staff turnover and increasing caregiver quality, the MCCA specified a series of pay raises tied to completion of training milestones. The Civilian Personnel Pilot Program for Child Care Operations, which began in February 1990, met MCCA requirements by increasing caregiver salaries under a pay banding system based on standardized child care position descriptions. Under this system, entry-level caregivers are paid at rates competitive with those of other entry-level workers on their installation drawn from the same labor pool. Pay banding already had been implemented in several sites. CDC directors on two installations that we visited where pay banding was in effect reported that far more qualified applicants were seeking caregiver positions. On one installation, the CDC director reported that turnover appeared to have "dramatically" decreased. Before pay banding, she noted, 10-15 out of about 170 caregivers had been leaving each week. Since pay banding, that number had decreased substantially.
Preliminary DoD data show a substantial effect of pay banding on employee turnover. Six-month turnover rates for CDC caregivers fell below 40 percent in every service, and were under 25 percent in the Army and Air Force (17.6 percent and 23 percent respectively). These figures compare favorably with annual turnover rates of 61-300 percent prior to pay banding, although a simple doubling of the six-month rate to achieve an annual rate is not appropriate (Whitebrook et al., 1990).
Moreover, study results suggest that child care staff are completing the training required to advance in pay and status somewhat faster than expected. The study concludes that pay banding will help to achieve MCCA goals by increasing caregiver stability and quality.
None of the pay banding provisions apply to FDC providers, who set their own fees. Their incentives and disincentives differ substantially from those of CDC caregivers.
FDC providers to whom we spoke talked about a range of disincentives to participate in FDC. A number mentioned rigid training requirements that had to be fulfilled after hours. Long and rigid hours were described by one service child care manager as the major disincentive to FDC recruitment. If a provider needs or wishes to take time off, she must make special arrangements to do so. The inclination to allow a teenaged child or a spouse to take over must be resisted, as it violates FDC regulations except in extreme emergencies. On some installations, hourly slots in the CDC are available on a first-call basis to FDC providers who may need to take time off; on at least one of these installations, none of the FDC providers whom we interviewed were aware of this opportunity. Several providers told us that they were encouraged to rely on other FDC providers to care for their charges when they needed time off. This rarely worked, most noted, because providers could not accommodate extra children without violating adult-to-child ratios. Nowhere had other efforts been made to reduce this important disincentive to providing FDC care.
Several FDC providers with whom we spoke viewed required retraining at each PCS move as a strong disincentive to participate, particularly because, unlike CDC staff, training time comes out of their leisure time and they must pay any costs incurred out of their own pockets.[25] Required insurance (although sometimes heavily subsidized), furniture, fire extinguishers, and other equipment must be purchased as well.
On some of the installations that we visited, child development staff have attempted to increase FDC incentives through the provision of equipment loans and toy-lending services. On one installation, discussions were under way about the possibility of loaning FDC providers the equipment that they are required to have (e.g., fire extinguishers) as a means of reducing start-up costs. Transferrable licenses would also encourage involvement and stability. A CDS director noted that the ultimate incentive to become an FDC provider was the avoidance of problems: undertaking unlicensed child care in military quarters can lead to expulsion from those quarters. But avoiding sanctions does little to encourage those who currently provide no care to become involved in the program: for those people to become involved, the program must seem appealing and the costs of participation relatively low.
There was a marked absence of discussion of compensation as an incentive to become an FDC provider. Indeed, we were struck by the many providers whom we interviewed who seemed compelled to tell us how little they earned doing this work.[26] Our sense was that while CDC caregivers have achieved a modicum of professionalism, so that increased wages were seen as both legitimate and an important way of providing program quality, such thinking had not extended to FDC. FDC providers are presumed to operate under an older model, in which largely untrained people care for children out of love (e.g., Nelson, 1990). According to this model, too much compensation would attract the "wrong" types--those who wanted or needed to make a living wage from their work.
The lack of efforts to subsidize FDC providers noted above fits neatly with this latter model, but the model needs revision. Lack of adequate compensation limits the number and quality of potential caregivers, which reduces both FDC availability and parental inclination to use it.
As discussed above, the commander has enormous discretion with regard to the structure and funding of CDS, which complicates CDS planning and management. These complexities are exacerbated in many places by a lack of clarity about the fiscal expectations for CDS. On a number of the installations that we visited, CDS staff operated under the expectation that CDS would at least break even. Indeed, on one installation, a $270,000 deficit the year before had caused serious problems.
Such expectations had led to some troubling and demoralizing practices. Infant care in the CDC on several installations was eliminated because it cost too much to provide. Caregivers in many CDCs told us that they purchase their own supplies because of inadequate budgets, and because the time between a supply order and receipt of materials can exceed two years. One CDS director spends much of her time on weekends at garage sales, looking for inexpensive supplies for the CDC. In a few locations, parents were asked to contribute supplies as well, a policy, claimed a colonel, that has a nice "silver lining"--it gets parents involved in the center.
The new fee policies mandated under the MCCA, implemented in a number of the installations that we visited, were causing difficulties. Parents resented the requirement that they show evidence of income, and at least one CDC director worried about the possibilities of falsification of the copied tax forms that were required as evidence. Those whose fees increased under the new plan resented it; on one installation a number of indignant parents had forsaken the CDC for civilian care. In other places, the increased fees that higher ranking parents would pay ironically enough created problems for administrators. Since fees had to be matched, higher fees required more appropriated funds.
Those whose fees decreased, the majority on most installations, were naturally pleased with the change. A senior enlisted representative described his own child care goal as making access to child care "fair and equal, based on grade." The new fee policy went a long way toward meeting that goal, in his view. Fee reductions created their own problems, however. Lower fees meant less total income to many CDCs at a time when caregiver wages were rising and lower ratios were going into effect. This policy had caused several centers that were not receiving sufficient appropriated funds support to match fees to experience an unplanned deficit.
Funding problems also contributed to reduced FDC coordinator positions in some locations. Given limited budgets, money tends to be channeled to the CDC rather than to FDC. According to many respondents, the money spent on FDC coordinators is "wasted," since FDC providers cannot hope to improve the CDS fiscal picture. As one respondent described it, the salaries of coordinators are a drain on CDS, since their work does nothing to increase the number of CDC slots, which are the revenue-generating mechanism for CDS.[27]
Many parents couched their preferences for the CDC in monetary terms. Particularly in places where the CDC does not accept infants, unregulated FDC fees had escalated to the point where FDC cost rivaled that of civilian care. Higher ranking military members could handle these fees and remained with FDC providers, but lower ranking personnel were left without the option of FDC, which reinforced their preference for the CDC.
Congress and advocates disagree. They argue that the long hours that children spend in care allow no less than high-quality, developmental care. Extensive data that demonstrate the relationship of high-quality developmental care to improved cognitive and social development (e.g., Ruopp, et al. 1979; Hayes, Palmer, and Zaslow, 1990; McCartney, 1984; Howes and Olenick, 1986; Howes, 1988) support their argument.
Most of the parents to whom we spoke expressed a clear and strong preference for the CDC over FDC because they perceived that stability, quality of care, and safety were better there. The greater perceived stability frequently derives from bricks and mortar rather than from continuity of care. One mother to whom we spoke expressed the typical preference for the CDC because of its greater stability; she noted in passing that her twin daughters had had nine different teachers over the last year.
We found a strong tendency among our respondents--both parents and military personnel--to rate their CDC highly. For example, an Army general told us, "We've got the best child care in the world in the U.S. Army." An admiral echoed this view, contending that the Navy is doing a "great" job with its child care programs, and that the programs were far superior to those offered in the civilian sector. In many cases, the praise came from people, such as commanders, who had not visited any center other than their own; in these instances, they reported to us what they had heard from others. Others had concluded that their center was better than civilian centers because, in the words of one, "more people are watching." Excellent training programs and careful screening of caregivers were believed to contribute to the higher quality of military centers.
These assessments were particularly striking because they were collected at about the time that the no-notice inspections required by the MCCA were beginning. The early inspections in CDCs chosen because of quality concerns were turning up fundamental problems in meeting health and safety codes. In addition, the quality of care in the centers visited in the first waves was not considered very good by inspection teams, and had led, in at least two instances, to the immediate closing of a CDC. One high-level civilian policymaker in the Navy argued that there is a widespread tendency to overestimate quality on local installations, and suggested that commanding officers and CDS directors on installations where CDS had a way to go should be encouraged to visit good centers, so that they could see what a quality center looks like.[28] A Marine colonel echoed this view, noting that while there are some really good programs, there are some pretty bad ones whose personnel actually believe that they are doing a good job.
Quality in FDC. In contrast to their high quality ratings for CDCs, parents often expressed concerns about the quality of care in FDC homes. One mother was pleased with the center's carefully designed curriculum, and contrasted it with the absence of any curriculum in FDC homes, a reality underscored for her by the fact that the TV was on in every FDC home that she had visited prior to choosing the CDC. The lack of training of FDC providers worried some parents, although in at least some places FDC providers were required to have the same training as CDC caregivers. Another parent noted that the facilities, especially play spaces, were far superior in the CDC, since the housing on-base was small and outside space limited.
An Air Force recreation director responsible for CDS summed up the views that we heard about FDC from many parents: 99 percent of the parents using FDC would move to the CDC if they could, he contended. Its more structured program, better-trained staff, carefully monitored food program, better emergency preparedness, and subsidies allow the CDC to offer a higher quality, safer program. In addition, its institutional status provides a measure of stability and reliability not possible in FDCs. Would this assessment lead him to urge changes to the FDC program designed to reduce some of these differentials? "No," he replied, "there is little point in training FDC providers because there is so much instability there."
Little data exist that can support or refute the oft-heard contention that center-based care is a more reliable child care source. Our secondary analyses of data from the Army family survey, discussed in Section 4, do address this point. They suggest that in fact CDCs may not provide more reliable care, if one measures reliability in terms of days of work lost because of child care problems. Although there are no relevant published data concerning civilian child care, unpublished tabulations from a large national survey indicate that a much higher proportion of working parents with preschoolers lose time from work for child-related reasons when their primary care arrangement is a day care center as opposed to a family day care home.[29]
Shared perceptions of lower FDC quality reflect command and parent anxieties, and the limited empirical data about FDC (Hayes, Palmer, and Zaslow, 1990), but may also reflect a notable failure by the DoD and the services to publicize information that supports FDC.[30] Data on improved health outcomes for infants, noted above, and reduced days lost to work among parents who use FDC could be used to actively encourage greater use of FDC. Moreover, a number of changes could be made to the program to increase both perceived and real quality. Training requirements that equal those of CDC caregivers, subsidies to promote stability and encourage higher quality recruits, and greater integration of CDC and FDC activities would all help to elevate the status, quality, and appeal of FDC.
A minority of parents prefers FDC. A mother of a three-year-old likes the fact that FDC provides one-on-one care and greater learning opportunities in a small group. A number of parents were grateful for the flexibility accorded by FDC providers, both in terms of hours and illness, as discussed below. Several parents indicated that their initial reluctance to use FDC changed once they experienced it. This was especially true of parents of infants and toddlers.
Quality in YA. Children who use YA facilities are on their own to a considerable extent. Once they have parental permission to participate in YA programs, they generally are free to come and go as they please. When YA facilities do not provide transportation to and from school, children who use the center for after-school care get to and from the center on their own. These open-door policies are a concern to some YA staff. Said one YA director, "YA is not adequate for the youngest kids sometimes." But others want to keep YA the way it has always been.
Sometimes, however, these efforts met with difficulties. In two sites, attempts to make the center safer were found to violate fire regulations. In another site, the center was cited by safety inspection teams for the lack of windows in several classrooms. The director speedily arranged for the prescribed windows to be cut. Once done, the fire inspection team promptly cited the center for having compromised the fire safety of the walls--the windows installed did not meet the fire code. At the time we visited, the director was in the process of negotiating with the safety and fire people to work out an acceptable way to meet both sets of requirements.
Parents share these concerns. Whereas many believe that FDC is safer than civilian care, most believe that FDC is far riskier than care in the CDC. This risk was described by several respondents as particularly difficult for military parents to accept. A Family Services director described military parents as very security oriented. A senior enlisted representative told us, "most people can't wait to get themselves and their kids behind that twelve foot fence [which surrounds the installation]."
The services have attempted to address these concerns by requiring background checks on potential FDC providers and their spouses, and by the institution of more rigorous training and unannounced visits to FDC homes. Nevertheless, training and requirements for FDC providers are often less stringent than those for CDC caregivers. The absence of standard training requirements for all caregivers contributes to continuing safety concerns with regard to FDC. At the DoD level, the limited attention paid to FDC in the DoDI, where just one page is devoted to FDC, conveys the sense that FDC receives little oversight.
Commanders as well dislike the risks that they associate with FDC, and act accordingly. An admiral whom we interviewed told us that the Navy had been reluctant at first to promote family-based care, preferring CDCs, where more control could be exercised. Demand for child care compelled them to support the program, as discussed below. According to the IG report, many installations still do not have a formal FDC program, as noted above. Commanders on installations without FDC programs almost uniformly cite safety risks as the reason.[31]
We found little data relevant to these concerns.[32] Certainly, the most publicized child abuse in military child care has occurred in CDCs, and respondents described those incidents as nightmares they strove to avoid. Data from the civilian sector show that nine out of ten family day care providers have never had a complaint filed against them. Of those who have, the average claim was less than $500 (Kalemkiavian, 1989).
Furthermore, children of widely different ages often share the same space, with only signage to demarcate age groups. Typical was a Youth Center that we visited where only the Teen Club was physically separated from the other programs. Programs serving 5- to 12-year-olds coexist side by side.
| Parental Preference | Care Type | Flexibility |
| 1 | On-base child development center (CDC) | 4 |
| 2 | On-base family day care (FDC) | 1 |
| 3 | Off-base military family day care | 2 |
| 4 | Off-base civilian child care center | 5 |
| 5 | Off-base civilian family day care | 3 |
But we found instead a heavy reliance on child development centers, which provide the least flexible care on the installation. One reason for their predominance has to do with parental preference. As shown in Table 3.1, most parents to whom we spoke ranked the child development center as far and away their first choice for child care. A recent parent survey conducted by Child Development Services staff in the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) supports our findings. Army center-based care received the highest preference ratings on each of the three installations for which data were reported.
In the view of one CDS director, parents often prefer the center because it is familiar. "They [parents] immediately think of the center first because they know the most about it," she said. "We do try to educate them as they come through to understand that the center may not be the best place for them." In her view, it is critical to get single parents and dual military parents into FDC if their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) involves a lot of deployment. This way, the FDC provider can simply keep the child longer during deployments, resulting in greater continuity of care. She indicated that such arguments by CDC staff are usually well received by parents. A long waiting list on her installation makes the message more palatable as well. As a corollary to this approach, the same director feels strongly that FDC providers must be willing to care for children nights and weekends when parents deploy.
During our installation visits, we heard of many instances in which the inflexible hours at the CDC had created difficulties for parents and in some cases for whole units. A single mother, for example, had had to work late to repair a plane scheduled for an imminent flight. When the number of hours that her children were permitted to remain in the CDC that day had elapsed, the mother had to leave her work and head for the center.[34] Once the children were picked up, she brought them back to the runway, where they played in a van under the supervision of a sitter. While this mother went to the center and retrieved her children, the repair and flight crews were unable to work. In another instance, a remote desert installation was gearing up to go on summer hours, which meant that all activities would commence an hour earlier. The CDC switched to summer hours at the same time as the rest of the installation made the transition, so that care continued to be available during regular working hours. However, one unit commander decided to go to summer hours two weeks earlier than the rest of the installation. Parents in this unit had to make arrangements for one hour's care in the early morning. A dual military couple assigned to this unit was unable to find such care; they alternated reporting to work an hour late each day for those two weeks.
CDC staff generally felt that there was little they could do about child care gaps, since they were already open for as long as 12 hours daily. CDC directors in many sites talked about efforts over the years to provide care for those single parents and parents with long or irregular hours by keeping the center open late or opening it especially early. In virtually every case, they found that such efforts were very costly and served only a few children at any one time. Consequently, these efforts were eliminated. Some worried, in fact, that children were spending too many hours at the CDC. Only rarely had anyone thought beyond extended center hours as a response to inevitable gaps in care.[35]
Inflexibility does not pertain exclusively to hours. Sick child policies and the administration of medication to recovering children cause particular difficulty for parents. We were told of numerous instances in which strict sick child policies caused parents to lose duty time. A registered nurse who worked in the on-base hospital complained bitterly of the CDC policy that required parents to get physician approval before a child with a temperature of 99 degrees would be allowed to return to the center. This policy not only involved considerable amounts of time taken from duty, it burdened the base's health care delivery system.
Policies on medication vary by service; the Army and Air Force permit some staff members with Surgeon General's training to administer medication because child care is a mission issue; forcing parents to come in and administer medication would interfere with the mission. Policies that prohibit staff from administering medication in other services are predicated on liability concerns. A CDS director on a Naval base noted that the exclusion of sick children and the inability of staff to administer medication create "frequent problems" for parents who have to get to work.
Such problems were readily acknowledged by the service child care managers, and some change has occurred. The Navy, for example, has somewhat reluctantly altered its policy about the administration of medication: such administration is not advised, but it is no longer prohibited.
Most parents whom we interviewed had no plan at all for times when the usual provider could not be used. Indeed, a good deal of time was spent in our interviews talking with parents about care for sick children or care when their normal provider was unavailable. Typically, parents jointly assume the burden for such care. In some families, the employed civilian spouse first uses up available paid leave, since, as a Family Services director noted, "the military structure is intimidating," and active duty parents are reluctant to ask for time off to care for a sick child. A civilian parent told us that at first she had cared for the children while they were ill. But she had used up all her leave doing so, and hesitated to request more time off when a child recently became sick lest her performance rating suffer. Her active duty husband agreed to care for the child. To do so, he had to get approval from three separate levels of authority, and felt so embarrassed and angry when his commitment to the service and his veracity were questioned, and the reasons why his wife could not do it were elicited, that she doubted he would ever ask again.
Other parents reported a different approach. In these families, the active duty spouse was the favored sick child caretaker, because time off for this reason did not count against annual leave, whereas the civilian worker would have been docked. The implications of these arrangements for unit readiness are striking.
Interestingly, command respondents rarely had thought about care for sick children. In many cases, CDS staff had paid little attention to this issue either. In fact, on one installation, the CDS director told us that when a child seemed unwell, staff called the parents, who, almost without exception, came quickly to pick the child up. She remembered during our discussion that at one time, the base hospital provided care for mildly ill children, but did not know if that program was still available.
The inconsistency between the notion of child care as a means of increasing readiness and the lack of attention to such issues as sick child care was striking. A garrison commander explained his lack of attention: most married soldiers have spouses who are presumed to be available in emergencies. Single parents are supposed to have a plan for emergencies known to the command. But, he acknowledged, "There has been no full court press regarding these plans."[36] Those few command respondents who had thought at all about sick child care assumed that parents just took care of it, which they in fact did, although at some cost to their own careers and to the efficiency of their units. In response to our questions about care for sick children, an Air Force Colonel recited his motto: "no one is irreplaceable," which negated such concerns. Those who had thought more about the issue were divided. Some believed that caring for their own children when they were sick or finding providers to do so was simply one of the burdens of parenthood, and one which parents, and not the military, should assume. A few argued, however, that the military can and should be actively involved in helping parents plan for inevitable gaps in child care, out of concern for readiness.
Excess Demand
Everywhere we went, excess demand was a major topic of discussion, and on many
installations, excess demand was perceived to be the most pressing and
important child care issue. Typically, the CDCs were filled to capacity and
had long waiting lists; indeed, long waiting lists were part of the impetus
behind the MCCA. Many parents would never succeed in getting their child into
the CDC. The issue of excess demand includes four components--definitional
issues, decisionmaking, methods of demand assessment, and ways to better meet
demand--each of which is discussed below.
Basically, child care is provided by people who earn wages providing it. These wages are paid out of parents' earnings. If the price charged for child care is high, more providers will offer it because it represents an opportunity for them to earn good wages. But fewer parents will buy it, since high child care costs taken out of their often low wages will result in low net wages, or even negative net wages. Women in this situation will drop out of the labor market and no longer demand child care.[37]
If the price charged for child care is low, many parents will want to buy it, because they will be able to keep a larger share of their earnings. In a competitive market in which prices are allowed to fluctuate, a condition of excess demand will not remain for very long because parents seeking care will bid up the price and more providers will be willing to work at the higher wage rate. With subsidization of some slots, however, excess demand will never be eliminated, as discussed below.
Subsidized Child Care. When subsidies are available, caregivers are willing to provide care at a lower price, since the subsidy makes up the difference. The demand for care, however, will increase because the price consumers have to pay declines. If subsidies are provided only to a limited number of slots, these slots will become relatively more attractive than unsubsidized, more expensive, or lower quality slots. The result is excess demand for the subsidized child care slots that must be rationed in some way. Typically, in the child care sector this happens through the creation of waiting lists. Long waiting lists for subsidized care, however, do not indicate that there is an overall shortage of child care. They merely indicate that the demand for subsidized child care exceeds the supply of subsidized child care slots at the subsidized price.
Although there is excess demand for subsidized child care spaces, it cannot be assumed that the children on these waiting lists are without child care, since parents using nonsubsidized care are likely to go on the waiting list for subsidized care should it become available. The length of the waiting list is also not a reliable indicator of the amount of excess demand when children can be signed up for more than one subsidized child care slot. Furthermore, some parents may not place their child(ren) on the waiting list if they perceive that the chance of getting subsidized care is very low. If they believe that they could not obtain a job that would make it worth their while to work given unsubsidized child care costs, they might not work and might not go on a waiting list for subsidized care.
Waiting Lists: What Do They Mean? Other forces in addition to excess demand for subsidized child care contribute to long and growing waiting lists for military child care:
Because the standard of living for single-earner families has been falling during the last two decades, increasing numbers of married mothers with young children have been drawn into the labor force (Leibowitz and Waite, 1988). The net benefit to a family of a mother's labor force participation is a direct function of the cost of child care. If the cost of child care is too high, it will not pay for the mother to work.
Although there is little evidence about the frequency with which mothers in the military choose not to work because of child care costs, evidence from the civilian sector indicates that 20 to 25 percent of mothers with preschool-age children choose not to work for this reason (Presser and Baldwin, 1980; Mason, 1987). These studies also show that the group most constrained by high child care cost are those in most need of employment income: the young, the poor, and the poorly educated. This is not surprising given that poor families spend 21-25 percent of their income on child care expenses, whereas nonpoor families spend only 8 percent of their income on child care (U.S. Department of Labor, 1988).
Military families are likely to experience these constraints as well. But without further study of the characteristics of the waiting list population, it is not possible to determine what proportion of the list consists of families who are constrained in their work by the lack of subsidized child care.
Finally, there has been increasing recognition of the developmental benefit of day care centers and preschools for children aged three and older (Ruopp et al., 1979; Philips, 1987). The result has been increased demand for part-day preschool programs. Given the subsidy available for such programs in the CDCs, it is not surprising that the waiting lists for such programs have grown. In areas where the quality of preschool programs is below that of the CDCs, the waiting list is likely to be even longer.
Because of the way waiting lists are currently managed and demand is assessed, it is impossible to determine what fraction of those on waiting lists have acceptable care but want a cheaper alternative, what fraction have care that is unacceptable in terms of quality, and what fraction are currently not working because of the inability to obtain subsidized care, as discussed above.[38]
It is important to understand that subsidized care to a limited number of child care slots will always result in excess demand and waiting lists. The excess demand for subsidized child care can only be eliminated by providing enough slots for all military dependents whose parents want it. The extent to which the waiting lists consist of parents for whom excess demand results in a constraint on their labor force participation cannot be determined without an in-depth study of the relationship between child care costs and the labor supply of spouses in the military.
Excess demand has led to pressure nearly everywhere to construct new facilities. However, the decision to request military construction (MILCON) funds for a new child development center is rarely an easy one. In many places, the commander had been told that only two or three MILCON projects would be funded: the decision to request funds for a child development center often meant that other needed projects, such as a supply depot, could not be built.
Moreover, requesting the construction of a child care center in lieu of a supply depot raised difficult questions about the role and importance of child care to military operations. On some installations, such decisions resurfaced issues of equity. In one sense, some argued, a new center would increase equity, by making child care available to more families. Others viewed a new CDC as reducing equity, by putting the needs of a relatively few families ahead of mission-related construction or ahead of programs serving far more people.
Requesting a new center has also been constrained of late by the requirements of the MCCA. Under this legislation, each child in care essentially increases the appropriated funds that must be devoted to child care, since parent fees must be matched dollar for dollar with appropriated funds. Because most commanders had received no additional funds to support new MCCA requirements, they were having difficulty projecting how they would meet the MCCA match requirement with current resources. The idea of increasing capacity and thus required appropriated funds allocations was rather unappealing.
At the same time, capacity in many centers has been reduced because of the lower child-to-caregiver ratios specified in the DoD Instruction. A number of respondents told us that in their view, two of the major goals of the MCCA, to improve quality and increase capacity, appear to be mutually exclusive. Reduced capacity compels efforts to increase the number of slots, while the required match in the face of the lack of appropriated funds under the MCCA limits incentives to provide more care, at least through CDCs.
The decision about whether to allocate finite construction funds to building a new CDC typically raises questions about the role and viability of FDC as well. There was general consensus that a faster and cheaper means of increasing capacity was to expand the FDC program. Indeed, the ability to rapidly increase child care capacity through FDC was often described by members of the command as one of the FDC's major advantages.[39]
But there were a substantial number of command staff who took a completely different view of FDC. These respondents noted that although FDC expansion did not require new construction, FDC represented a money drain, because it generated no funds for the installation while forcing the installation to pay for the required FDC home coordinator(s). In contrast, at least before the MCCA, each new CDC slot carried the possibility (and in some locations, the reality) that money would actually be generated. In making this assertion, none of our respondents "figured in" the substantial subsidies surrounding the construction and operations of the CDC. Whereas it is certainly true that the government does not benefit monetarily from creating FDC slots, calculating the true cost of each CDC slot may show a deficit there as well, and potentially a much larger one than is created by opening another FDC home. Cost-benefit analyses of the relative cost of different child care options would help military policymakers to make more informed decisions about the best ways to increase the supply of child care for military families.
CDC construction requests in most instances also raised questions about what child care is--a service, a benefit, or an entitlement--and how much child care needs to be provided. In some locations, local markets made these questions easy to answer. For example, in an urban location in an expensive area, it was clear that most personnel could not afford to pay civilian child care fees. Consequently, there appeared to be considerable consensus about the need to provide additional child care on the installation. Similarly, in the isolated locations we visited, respondents generally agreed that child care sufficient to meet a large percentage of the need had to be provided on the installation, as civilian care was simply inaccessible to the large numbers of families living in military housing. In contrast, on an installation on which on-base housing was severely limited, the expansion of child care on-base was the subject of considerable debate.
Decisions to request new construction may risk additional problems. We heard several times about an installation on which a new center had been requested and built, based on a very large waiting list. When the center failed to fill immediately after it opened, it created a "very embarrassing" situation for the commander and CDS staff, according to a CDS director on an installation that we visited.
Part of the problem in this case, and in other similar ones, is the lack of awareness that we encountered about new supply. Civilian experience has demonstrated that new child care centers almost never fill immediately, even when need and demand are great (Burud, Aschbacher, and McCroskey, 1984). In many cases, parents have had to find alternative care. That care frequently is satisfactory enough that parents decide not to subject their children to the stress of changing providers. In others, contracts have been signed that can be broken quickly only at considerable cost. Civilian experience shows that there are several times over the course of a year when parents are more able to make a rapid commitment to a new center. Typically, these times are at the beginning of the school year and the beginning of the calendar year. More awareness of the ways and the time frame in which new centers fill might enable centers to open at more propitious times, or would at least provide commanding officers and CDS staff with ammunition against charges of overbuilding.
We found substantial variation in the ways in which waiting lists are developed, maintained, and monitored across installations. On some installations, the list is maintained with little or no oversight. Parents sign up and wait until they are called. Typically, if they are unable or do not wish to take an available slot they are either dropped from the list or reassigned to the bottom. Usually, parents who are offered slots are given two weeks to move their child into the placement or begin paying for full-time care, whether or not they are ready to use the slot at that time.
In contrast, we visited installations on which the waiting list was maintained by one or more full-time equivalents. In these locations, parents were called as often as monthly to confirm their continuing interest in a child care slot. In other locations, parents were sent interest cards they had to return by a certain date to remain on the list. In some cases, the steps required to remain on the waiting list were unclear to parents. In several instances, parents had been dropped from the list because of failure to follow procedures that they had not understood. In other places, formal procedures for maintenance of the list were not always followed.
Sometimes, parents are charged a nominal fee ($2-$4) to get on the list; in a few instances, these fees are paid on an annual basis; payment entitles the family to use hourly care. When such fees are assessed, they apply to parents of all ranks.
Because of servicewide priorities assigned to certain family types, for example, single parents, waiting lists may be governed by fairly elaborate category systems that keep people in the proper place relative to the total population of care-seekers and to the others in their subgroup. For example, if a single parent applies for care in an Army CDC, he or she is assigned to the "A" category and goes to the bottom of the "A" group, which is restricted to other single parents. Some installations add their own rules, such as parents already receiving care through FDC receive lower priority than those with no available care, or no available military care, but such rules are infrequent.
On some installations, separate lists are maintained for FDC and for the CDC. On others, a policy decision had been made that the installation would be responsible for helping parents to find military child care, but that no distinction would be made between the CDC and FDC programs. A preference for one or the other might be accommodated, but the waiting list was not designed to do so. On one installation, the waiting list was exclusively for the CDC. A file box of FDC providers was made available for seekers of FDC. In some locations with multiple CDCs, one central waiting list was kept; on other installations with multiple CDCs, parents had to put themselves on multiple lists.
These variations in the way in which waiting lists are established and maintained make the counts of people on these lists extremely untrustworthy. When there is no cost to remaining on a list, parents may choose to stay on indefinitely, artificially inflating demand. When parents perceive little likelihood that they will ever be accommodated, demand may be artificially deflated.[40] Everyone was aware that planning and resource allocation decisions could not depend on waiting list data, but with few or no other indicators, they essentially did.
A first step in understanding excess demand involves standardizing waiting list procedures and monitoring, so that waiting lists become comparable across installations. A second is to better predict demand. Recently, the Air Force devised a new, more precise means of assessing demand, which is presented on Form 3501. This approach involves the collection and combination of a number of demographic variables, for example, number of children 0-5 years whose parents are likely to use installation services, number of children of military couples, number of children with employed mothers, and number of civilian children to be served. This form is to be used by all bases to collect and combine data in a consistent way. The Air Force hopes to use the data from Form 3501 in refining demand studies by testing the predictions of the model underlying the form against CDS enrollments and waiting lists.
A draft of a DoD report entitled "Determining the 5-Year Demand for Child Care Services Within the Department of Defense," which was mandated under the MCCA, presents a set of procedures for identifying child care need. These procedures include the collection of data on the number and categories of personnel assigned to the installation and on the number of children by age and family status, and the manipulation of these data in a formula to determine "total potential need." Subjective factors unique to each installation are also considered. Once the services comment on the report and revisions are made, each service is expected to implement the procedures and to provide guidance on where the installation-level information required can be found: an installation report for meeting child care demand is the ultimate product. Both of these efforts are laudable for their attempts to standardize the assessment of demand; empirical validation of the formulas is a critical next step.
As noted above, support for the establishment and expansion of FDC programs is at best mixed, with considerable concern expressed for the safety of children and the acceptability of this kind of care to most parents. In most instances, command support has been offered when it has become clear that construction of a new center would not occur in the near future, and that the demand must be met in some way. Service directives promoting increased FDC expansion, some of which make construction approval contingent on a certain level of FDC, facilitated this support.[42]
The emphasis on FDC to regulate demand helps to explain the widespread failure to better link FDC into the CDS system. On several installations that we visited, respondents understood that FDC existed solely to supplement the center, and that its continuing existence depended upon excess demand. Should waiting lists disappear, numerous respondents told us, the first thing that they would do is close FDC to new providers. Others indicated that they would act to close down existing FDC homes as well. Indeed, on one installation, FDC had been closed down when the new center opened, out of concern that the center would not fill rapidly enough. At the time of our visit, some time after the center's opening, a substantial waiting list existed, and FDC had been reestablished. Such actions, while understandable, contribute to preexisting perceptions of FDC as an unreliable source of child care.
Other responses to excess demand were notable for their absence. Some Army installations have been actively pursuing information and referral efforts through the third branch of its CDS program, Supplemental Programs and Services. These efforts generally involve development and monitoring of a list of child care providers in the local community. Usually, such lists include licensed FDC provided by military and nonmilitary families, as well as the names of civilian child care centers. Such lists include clear statements that the Army does not monitor these facilities and is not endorsing them. One Army installation had begun discussions with county policymakers about the possibility of the Army providing military spouses living in civilian housing with training and support. Such an arrangement would increase the supply of FDC to both military and civilian children who would be eligible to use the new homes.
Although several high-level policymakers in Washington advocated other approaches to meeting demand (e.g., support for parent child care cooperatives), we found no evidence of such efforts during our installation visits. CDS operations in most locations were limited to CDC and some FDC. The many parents who needed services but were unable to receive them through CDC or FDC were largely left to make do.
[2]We use the term Youth Activities (YA), which is used by many programs, because it best conveys the current focus of most of these programs: sports activities for school-aged children.
[3]Subsidized child care is a form of compensation for families who have or expect to have children. For these families, child care increases the income stream relative to most civilian alternatives. Since increased income is associated with increased retention, child care almost certainly increases retention, but the amount of increase remains unclear.
[4]As discussed below, readiness goals may be better served by giving these families priority in FDC, which can provide more flexible care.
[5]Indeed, legislation has been introduced recently into Congress to bar single parents from continuing military service because of readiness concerns.
[6]Hourly care slots are not supposed to be used for regular full-day care.
[7]In situations like this, the Army expects that Supplemental Programs and Services would be called upon to help meet the demand for a large number of hourly care slots for a short period of time. SPS involvement might have reduced resentment on this installation.
[8]Commander discretion extends to decisions about whether to have a CDS program at all. DoD urges commanders to support CDS programs, noting that child care will be provided informally and without oversight in the absence of a formal CDS program.
[9]The match specified in the Act applied only to FY 1990, but was continued under DoD policy.
[10]The problems associated with a lack of appropriation in the Act were exacerbated by diversion of funds identified for child care to other programs on some installations. Had these funds been available to CDS, the CDS deficit would have been smaller; MCCA requirements heightened awareness of these diversions.
[11]Lack of an appropriation is not unusual, but typically when there is no appropriation, requirements are phased in, allowing budget planning to keep apace with implementation. In the case of the MCCA, rapid implementation of many provisions was required.
[12]Army wide, the 50/50 match has been exceeded, with more appropriated funds than parent fees going into CDCs.
[13]Congress has allowed reprogramming across line items in such instances.
[14]These investments include the training, licensing, and oversight of FDC providers, and some subsidization of liability insurance and equipment needs (e.g., toy and equipment loan programs).
[15]When FDC providers calibrate their fees to those of the CDC, they are effectively subsidizing parents. In the CDCs, the government provides the subsidy, which allows them to charge fees ranging from $45-$58 weekly for full-time care.
[16]These high fees were a concern to many respondents because they appear to undermine the MCCA's goal of more equitable child care access. But required fee reductions would add an unwanted layer of regulation to FDC. Moreover, fee reductions would create a substantial disincentive to provide FDC care and would lower FDC provider hourly wages substantially, thus interfering with MCCA goals of improved quality through reduced caregiver turnover and expanded availability of care.
[17]Although not discussed further here, this policy would also encourage placement of infants in the most appropriate care setting. Studies have shown that small group care as opposed to center-based care promotes positive health and emotional outcomes for infants and toddlers (Johansen, Leibowitz, and Waite, 1988; Anderson et al., 1988).
[18]Direct APF subsidies to FDC providers are allowed under the MCCA, but with the exception of a single Army pilot study discussed below, they have not been tried.
The loss of income incurred in becoming an infant home is substantial. Even if a provider charges just $40 a week for full-time care, she stands to lose as much as $6000 yearly by accepting only infants rather than mixed-age children. (This assumes 50 weeks of paid care per child yearly for the three children who cannot be cared for.)
An FDC provider who ran an infant home told us that the tradeoff was worthwhile: infants were far easier to care for because they did not run around. In addition, one of her babies was multiply-handicapped and needed considerable attention. She could not provide it if there were five other children in her home. (She charged the disabled infant's parents the same rate, and received no subsidy for his care, although subsidies for special needs children are authorized.)
[19]Under the pilot program, subsidies were also available to FDC providers who cared for special needs children or sick children, or who provided care for extended hours.
[20]FDC and CDC training are the same in the Army, which improves career mobility between the two systems.
[21]Rotating after-hours "on-call" responsibilities might follow procedures used in medical facilities.
[22]Ratios of staff to children in various activities (e.g., drop-in recreation, before- and after-school programs) are recommended in the DoD Action Plan for Youth Activities (June 1990, p. 5), but these ratios were not being implemented in the YA facilities we visited.
[23]The DoD Action Plan for Youth Activities (June 1990) notes that the lower bound for YA eligibility is grade 1.
[24]Under the MCCA, starting salaries now begin at $5.70 an hour.
[25]Such retraining is not required in all services.
[26]An informal Army study conducted in 1988 revealed that most FDC providers surveyed were not earning the hourly minimum wage (L. Smith, personal communication, May 30, 1991).
[27]The likelihood that CDC slots will generate revenues in the future is doubtful, given MCCA requirements. But a number of respondents noted that that possibility remains, whereas money spent for FDC will never benefit the government.
[28]The military will be in an excellent position to make this happen after the accreditation component of the MCCA is implemented and evaluated. This provision required the DoD to accredit 50 CDCs by June 1991. Once an evaluation of the impact of accreditation on childrens' development is completed, effective programs are to serve as "models."
[29]Unpublished data from the 1986 follow-up survey to the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972.
[30]Goelman and Pence (1987) found that quality of care in civilian FDC is much more variable than in centers, and that quality is a potent predictor of some child outcomes. Quality is associated with being licensed and part of a network (e.g., Goelman and Pence, 1987; Kahn and Kamerman, 1987); both of these characteristics apply to military FDC.
[31]At a Commander's Conference held in December 1990, it was noted by DoD staff that the absence of a formal FDC program does not ensure that there is no care being provided in military quarters. Indeed, they argued, a major command incentive for initiating an FDC program is to create a means of monitoring and regulating quarters-based care that will be provided, formal program or not.
[32]Much like the rest of the child care literature, the data on abuse incidence in day care is limited to centers. Finkelhor and Williams (1988) found that the rate of child sexual abuse in civilian centers to be 5.5/10,000; no estimate was available for family-based care.
[33]CDC hours are set at the discretion of the commander, so the CDC could be open longer if the commander so chose. However, limited use during extended hours has led commanders to conclude that extended CDC hours are not justified under normal circumstances, given high hourly costs to keep the CDC open.
[34]Some CDCs limit the number of hours a given child may be cared for in a given day, whereas others do not. This policy is at the discretion of the commander.
[35]The Army's Supplemental Programs and Services (SPS) program is designed to help fill gaps in care, but on the Army installations that we visited, we did not find SPS being used to accomplish this goal.
[36]Child care plans have become a salient issue of late because of the massive troop deployments to the Persian Gulf during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
[37]They may still demand preschool care, however, as discussed below.
[38]The Air Force has developed a data collection form that should help to sort out these groups of waiting list parents.
[39]The new DoD Instruction will clarify the role of FDC by requiring a specified level of FDC involvement before MILCON funds for a new CDC can be requested. This specification is designed to curb the tendency to prefer CDC to FDC care.
[40]Moreover, the complexity and length of these lists make it difficult for families to reestablish their day care arrangements when they move.
[41]As noted above, the preferred response is a new CDC. But even when funding for one is approved, it is sometimes several years before the new center opens.
[42]It is important to note that the amount of FDC in certain locations may be constrained because of high employment rates among potential FDC providers or because of limited or inappropriate base housing (e.g., mobile homes that cannot meet fire code requirements for FDC without expensive remodeling).