Child Care and Early Education Research Connections

Skip to main content

Descriptive study of continuity of care practice and children's experience of stability of care in Early Head Start

Description:
Background Continuity of care (CoC) is a widely endorsed theory-based practice in center-based early childhood programs. Despite its widespread endorsement, however, there are few empirical studies of CoC or children's actual experience of care stability in infant and toddler group settings. Objective This descriptive study investigated (1) the national percentage of EHS programs with centers implementing CoC, (2) potential differences between EHS programs with all or none of their operating centers implementing CoC, (3) the number of teacher changes children experienced during two consecutive years in EHS, as an indicator of early care stability, and (4) child and family characteristics of children having different levels of care stability during their EHS programs. Methods Using the recently released Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Study (Baby FACES) dataset, secondary analyses were conducted using descriptive statistics, mean difference tests, and Chi-square tests with sampling weights applied. Results Results showed that 29% of EHS programs reported no centers implementing CoC practices within their programs, and 57% of programs reported all of their centers implemented CoC. The 57% of EHS programs implementing CoC had greater stability of their administrative staff. Results further showed that during EHS, 29 and 34% of children experienced no or one teacher change, respectively, while 37% of children experienced two to six teacher changes. Child and family characteristics were generally not associated with children's stability of care in EHS. Conclusions CoC is not uniformly implemented across EHS programs, and many children experience multiple teacher changes in center-based EHS programs. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Country:
United States

- You May Also Like

These resources share similarities with the current selection.

Continuation of child care services: Louisiana's experience

Fact Sheets & Briefs

21st Century Community Learning Centers: Descriptive study of program practices

Reports & Papers

National Study of Child Care for Low-Income Families: Care in the home: A description of family child care and the experiences of the families and children that use it: Executive summary

Executive Summary
Release: 'v1.61.0' | Built: 2024-04-23 23:03:38 EDT