|
By
Catherine M. Pruissen
Fast
Facts:
- High
caregiver turnover erodes the quality of child care.
- Changing
caregivers often greatly affects a child's ability
to form trusting, loving attachments.
- Close
to 40% of all child care workers need to be replaced
each year.
- Compared
to the general work force, child care workers have
a higher level of education.
- Low
wages, a lack of benefits, and adverse working conditions
make it difficult for many child care workers to
remain in the profession.
Parents
are justifiably worried over the high staff turnover
at child care centres. But they are not alone. Directors
themselves note, in Caring For A Living, A Study
On Wages and Working Conditions In Canadian Child
Care, conducted by the Canadian Child Care Federation
and the Canadian Day Care Advocacy Association, that
"finding qualified substitutes," is a major
problem. Finding and keeping "permanent staff"
ranked as a problem.
There
are damaging effects of multiple changes in child
care arrangements and caregivers. These range from
an inability to form lasting, loving and trusting
attachments later in life, to negative effects on
a child's long term development and school performance.
The
U.S. National Child Care Staffing Study,
conducted by the Child Care Employee Project (1989),
found that children in centres where there was low
quality care and high staff turnover, were less competent
in language and social development.
High
turnover rates directly affect the overall quality
of a centre too. It takes time and money to find and
train a new employee. More than that, there is the
adjustment period between the staff, the caregiver,
and the children. It is only through knowing and understanding
each child's individual needs, strengths and personalities,
that caregivers can give each child the care and nurturing
he or she needs.
The
problem of caregiver turnover is not confined to the
daycare centre however. Indeed parents who use in-home
care or family daycare experience the same frustrations,
though on a larger scale as they, themselves, are
responsible for finding and screening caregivers.
While
low wages are the major reason caregivers leave the
field, a lack of benefits, poor working conditions,
little room for career advancement, and a severe absence
of respect and recognition for the enormity of their
job, are cited as factors in this high turnover.
Though,
perhaps, it may seem parents can do little to ensure
a continuity of care with a single caregiver at the
daycare centre, they certainly can make their concerns
heard. They can urge their local and national policy
makers to endorse "better child care by making
it affordable to more families through higher subsidies,
via the tax system, direct grants to providers and
other areas," says the Child Care Aware, a nationwide
program sponsored by the Dayton Hudson Corporation,
to help educate parents on quality child care, in
their paper, Child Care: Quality Is The Issue.
Parents
who use in-home or family daycare can show their support
by offering to help pay for a caregiver's medical
insurance premiums; setting up an allowance fund for
things such as dental care, prescription drugs, medical
expenses, etc.; providing a training allowance to
encourage their caregiver to upgrade her training;
recognizing the work the caregiver performs by doing
special things such as hosting a celebration for course
completion's, giving dinner or theatre tickets for
birthdays and anniversaries, presenting the caregiver
with thank you notes or flowers on occasion, or simply
by involving the caregiver in major family decisions
that effect her work with the children. Even a compliment
goes a long way.
It's
the little things we do today that bring about big
changes tomorrow.
|
