CITYWIDE Much like the successful restaurant rating system that has steered diners clear of below A-grade eateries, Los Angeles County child care centers are about to get a similar dose of scrutiny.
Under the new Steps to Excellence Program (STEP), child care centers in select cities, including Santa Monica, will be reviewed by a trained researcher who will assess the quality of service of each provider and make that information available on the Web to parents.
It’s a similar concept to the county’s highly regarded restaurant rating system in which restaurants that have been reviewed must post the results in their windows for all to see.
But the county’s new program is to determine if a day care center has a good teacher-to-student ratio or accommodates children with special needs, not if the waiter sneezed into the food.
In Los Angeles County, the demand for quality child care is high as there are more and more households with both parents working full-time. Collectively, parents in the county spend more than $1.4 billion annually on such services.
“This really helps those parents who don’t have the time or the ability to take off from work to sit in a child care facility setting and see where they’re putting their kids,” said Matt Rezvani, the chairman of the Police Roundtable for Child Care, the advising committee for the L.A. County Office of Child Care.
The Office of Child Care launched the program on June 22, the start of a three-year pilot phase. The program is optional and free for child care centers located in the nine target communities of Inglewood, Long Beach, Palmdale, Pasadena, Pomona, Santa Monica, Florence/Firestone, Wilmington and Pacoima/Arleta.
The program is estimated to cost the county an estimated $500,000 a year to operate.
“We really want to involve the programs that wouldn’t normally think about something like this,” said Kathy Malaske-Samu, the director of the Office of Child Care.
The goal of the pilot phase is to recruit more than 200 child care centers and 400 family child care homes in the nine communities.
Child care centers interested in the program are first required to conduct a self-assessment of their services. If they are pleased with the results, the provider could move forward with the rating process. But if the findings are less than desirable, the provider could request training and support from county officials before they submit the actual application to join the STEP program.
Once providers do jump into the rating process, a trained researcher is sent out to the field to conduct an on-site assessment, reviewing the child care center based on six components, such as whether it is compliant with county and state licensing and health regulations and how the programs accommodate children with special needs.
The centers will be rated on a scale of Step 1 — a program meeting basic licensing standards — to Step 5 — a provider with highly qualified teachers, a strong learning environment and an engaging relationship with its community.
The next few months will be spent reaching out to day care centers and providing training to providers that didn’t fare well in their self-assessments. On-site observations are expected to begin in September and a database with reviews should be up and running starting January 2008.
The rating system will set standards so that child care centers will be able to work toward improving the quality of the early learning experience, said Karen Kaye, executive director of Connections for Children.
Connections for Children, a non-profit resource and referral agency in Sunset Park, will pilot the county’s program for the 54 day care centers and 30 family child care homes in Santa Monica.
“The rating scale will really recognize the hard work that center directors and child care providers put into providing for the early learning environment for children,” said Patti Oblah, the associate director of Connections for Children. “Santa Monica is home to so many high quality programs.”
The program is meant to help parents make informed decisions about their child’s day care center and improve the quality of service of the centers.
The director of the day care program at the YMCA in Santa Monica, Kellie Fremming said she isn’t sure how much the new rating system will change the quality of child care services since all providers are already subject to fairly strict licensing regulations and are fined if they don’t comply.
County officials conduct on-site monitoring of licensed centers once every five years and every time a complaint is filed.
“I think in-home child care center should have a rating system because they’re [county] not as strict on them as child care centers per se,” Fremming said.
Child care quality rating systems have been implemented in 14 other states, including Colorado, Montana and North Carolina. A state-wide rating system has not been implemented in California.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services created the Star Quality Child Care Rating System in 2002. As of 2006, there are 57 providers that participate in the program.
“It’s been successful for the levels that we’re at,” said Jamie Palagi, the state of Montana’s early childhood services bureau chief. “We do feel it’s a work in progress, as we learn more information, we do spend more time on this to continually improve.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 10, 2007. Read the original PDF.