Article Link: http://www.exchangepress.com/article/school-age-child-care-trend-report/5017707/
In the portion of this status report published in the September 2007 issue of Exchange, we looked at what major reports are telling us about school-age care today. In this online continuation of this status report, we look at what school-age professionals are telling us about their field. In preparing the status report we surveyed professionals about…• What are the major challenges facing the school-age care field?
• What are parent expectations for school-age programs?
• What are the goals of school-age programs today?
We surveyed over 200 school-age professionals; the comments below represent a sampling of the views they shared with Exchange.
What are the major challenges facing the school-age care field?
As can be seen in Figure 1, finding qualified staff continues to be the prime challenge for school-age providers. Finding space, which in the past has ranked high on the list of concerns, still is seen as a challenge, but less so than finding funding and training staff.
Major challenges for school-age care
Julie Mathieu, George J. Mitchell Before/After School Program, Waterville, Maine:
“Our child care program overall is in really great shape, however, the biggest challenge is always to keep rates low for families, while at the same time being able to pay staff ...