What is quality care in child care?

Let’s revisit the question of quality care in early childhood.

Getting quality care is the final piece of the puzzle to foster children’s overall development laying the foundations for future learning and well-being.

Enrolling in an early childhood service with a high quality education program will ensure your child’s individual needs are being met, and that they will be challenged to grow and develop.

But what constitutes quality care? And why does quality matter?

Research has demonstrated the critical importance of the first three years of a child’s life on their overall growth, development and well-being as well as impact on lifelong learning.

Quality care and education helps to establish the foundation for future learning.

Quality in terms of child care is not easily defined as one particular element as there are many components that contribute to quality care and education.

The components of the system which achieve quality have been established.

For a service it’s essential to provide all components in order to contribute and strive to provide quality care. To not do so is to fall short of providing quality as all the care components are inter-related.

Achieving, maintaining and lifting quality care and education is complex coupled with multiple challenges.

Regulations are implemented with the purpose to help to define quality and set a generalized standard which over recent years there has been the effort to implement major reforms to improve the quality of the system. .

Quality care is more than just about providing care.

Firstly, there must be the right structures in place. Structures such as the National Quality Framework, introduced in 2012 which lay a foundation for the elements critical for achieving quality.

The Code of Ethics, the National Quality Framework and National Quality Standards must be adhered to.These regulations provide a baseline standard, however, they do not guarantee quality care and education or provision of positive outcomes. While these standards are critically important to a child’s well-being they do need to looked at holistically in relation to what constitutes quality care and education.

Once organisational structures are in place the focus now is on achieving quality through the practices of individuals and organisations.

These practices are in the interactions. The consistency, the nature and quality of the interactions are paramount. Interactions, engagements and relationships between staff, children and families and the community are paramount.

Striving to provide quality care is an ongoing process for any and every service.

The key to quality care are the components.

There are three core indicators of high-quality early childhood programs.

1. Interactions are central to the provision of quality care delivery.  Interactions influence and facilitate learning opportunities. The opportunities planned, designed and provided form part of the staffs care role. Sustained and reciprocal interactions foster children’s communication skills, extend their thinking, develop their ability to manage emotions and relationships and instill the skills and confidence to be effective learners.
2. The staff play a pivotal role. Yes the interactions are critically important, however, an educator must work as part of a team, have good communication, commitment, be motivated and consistent. Their relationships with the children, as well as with parents, are important and should be positive. Happy and contented carers in turn foster and facilitate the child’s development, and at least experienced if not trained (although the regulations mean that all staff will be trained or in training) and willing to contribute to overall quality care and education. The educator is the distinction between mediocre, good or quality care. Factors that can inhibit the carer are the individual centre conditions, the wage, the contentment they have, whether they are under any stress or tension and the lack of experience or training in their role. Carers are at the’ hub’ of providing quality care.
3. The learning environment is critical to the quality of an early childhood program and the learning experiences and engagement. The environment needs to foster a child’s’ capacity to play, explore, and learn safely. It also needs to  provide engaging and developmentally appropriate opportunities supporting all abilities and encouraging engaging interactions.

• Complexity of the market. Establishing solutions and structures that transcend all the various settings- Family Day Care, Long Day Care, Preschool, Kindergarten, etc as well as accommodating the different management types (not-for-profit, private, government, etc).
• Coordination and consistency of training.
• Low wage for educators.
• Low levels of recognition for those working in the sector.
• Current funding model.
• lack of support and mentoring.

While if may be awkward you should first raise any concerns or issues you have with the service directly.

Depending upon the concern it may involve discussing with the Director only, although other instances may provide the opportunity to discuss with the staff first.

The service should address the concern and keep you informed of the progress and the strategies to improve the concern.

If you feel your concerns have not been addressed then you can request a meeting to further discuss and establish their action plan to address the issue.

If you feel, following this step, that your concern has not been addressed or acknowledged then you can contact the regulatory authority. This differs depending on your state (or territory) and the best place to access this information for the contact details is via the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) website.