Models of Inclusion: Standing at the Cross Roads. Building Inclusive Child Care Through Child Care Development Funds

The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 has produced a growing recognition that children with disabilities have the same rights as other children to participate in community-based child care settings (Whitney, Grozinsky, & Poppe, 1999). But even a legal mandate is not sufficient to guarantee access to realistic and suitable child care options for every family, particularly those having children with emotional or behavioral disorders (National Child Care Information Center [NCCIC], 1997). The presentation addressed governmental policy and planning efforts to include children with emotional or behavioral challenges in settings with typically developing children. Particularly, presenters discussed the policy and planning context that resulted in current Child Care Development Fund plans, reported preliminary results of a content analysis of the plans, discussed a family member’s perspective on child care arrangements, and outlined some strategies for and barriers to inclusion gathered from directors of model programs

Inclusive Child Care: Challenges and Strategies

Responding to the need for research regarding models of inclusion in child care, the Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children\u27s Mental Health is in the process of conducting a series of studies aimed at guiding the design and implementation of inclusive child care policies and programs. In the course of previous research studies, our research team found that there did exist quality programs and family care arrangements that successfully included children with emotional or behavioral challenges in child care settings (Brennan, Rosenzweig, Ogilvie, Wuest, & Ward, 2001). Our goal was to learn more about the provider and setting characteristics associated with these successful programs. As a first step in the current research, state child care administrators, child care resource and referral agencies, and family organizations were sent a request to nominate programs that successfully included children with emotional or behavioral challenges in child care; this resulted in nominations of 104 programs across the United States. Personnel at thirty-four of the nominated programs participated in a survey designed to learn more about their challenges and strategies for inclusion. We were particularly interested in five key areas: (1) the types of services these programs offered, (2) the needs of the families they served, (3) the inclusion strategies they employed, (4) the barriers staff reported facing, and (5) their view of the role of families in their programs