Promising Practices for High-Quality Home-Based Child Care Networks: Focus Group Briefs

A child playing with colorful plastic building blocks, holding up a yellow piece.

Drawing from multiple focus groups conducted with network leaders and providers, this series of briefs examines the underlying values and goals of home-based child care networks, network services offered to providers, and network implementation practices that research suggests most likely contribute to positive outcomes for providers, children, and families.

Guiding this series is the Strengthening Home-based Child Care Networks brief which describes a set of 11 evidence-based benchmarks and indicators for high- quality networks grouped into three broad categories: “Why” benchmarks unpack fundamental values and goals of a network; “What” benchmarks articulate network services that meet goals for providers, children, and families; “How” benchmarks reflect evidence-based implementation strategies used by networks.

Supporting Providers as Equal Partners also available in Spanish and Chinese:

Supporting Providers’ Economic Well- Being and Sustainability

Network Practices Around Equity and Social Justice also available in Spanish:

Although we celebrate Provider Appreciation Day one day a year, the home-based child care providers who care for our children earn our gratitude and support every single day, every single moment of the year.
Hayley Village, a home-based child care provider in San Mateo County, California, shares her experience with unaffordable housing and what it means to have to relocate her family and her business.
Women’s contributions and experiences are not well represented in the record books, but it is just as rich and worth celebrating. Ours is a tale of community, resilience, and connection to one another, and it is inextricably linked with care work.