Promoting child development and behavioral health: family child care providers' perspectives

Given the significant proportion of children in nonparental child care and the importance of early life experiences on development, interventions to improve a child care provider's ability to enhance a young child's development and behavior are essential. Such interventions require understanding of and responsiveness to the provider's self-perceived roles, responsibilities, and willingness to engage in such interventions, yet prior research is limited. The purpose of the study was to characterize licensed family child care provider perspectives as a first step toward designing effective provider-based interventions to improve children's development and behavior.

We conducted a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with licensed family child care providers serving economically disadvantaged children. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and synthesized into common themes using the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis.

The family child care providers described five domains related to their role in child development and behavior: (a) promotion, (b) assessment, (c) advising parents, (d) acknowledging barriers, and (e) their own skill development.

The family child care providers we interviewed describe how the developmental and behavioral health of children is an important aspect of their role and identify innovative and feasible ways to enhance their skills. Understanding the self-perceived role, responsibility, and willingness of child care providers is an important foundation to designing effective interventions to achieve high-quality child care.