Day care project paying off

A Coeur d’Alene child care installed a safer “fall” area beneath its playground structures with financial assistance from the state.

Another in Post Falls hired more teachers to improve its teacher-to-child ratio.

A third in Rathdrum purchased more early education materials, including some that help young children understand diversity and disabilities.

And all these centers have figured out ways to reach out more to parents, increasing their involvement in their children’s care.

These are some of the improvements reported by child-care providers who volunteered to participate in a statewide pilot project called IdahoSTARS, which stands for State Training and Registry System. The program aims to establish a quality rating system for child care similar to those used to rate hotels and restaurants.

Kristine Hays, owner of Prairie Children’s Center in Rathdrum, said the training her staff received from the state resulted in the establishment of a private networking Web site parents now use to interact with and support each other.

“I did not expect to be able to reach families in this way. It’s really a nice surprising outcome of this,” Hays said. “That’s part of the whole picture – to create a community of families.”

The money for IdahoSTARS comes from a federal Childcare Development Block Grant and is funneled into the state Department of Health and Welfare, said Martha Anderson, the IdahoSTARS regional quality child-care consultant in North Idaho.

Earlier this year, 70 child-care providers applied to participate in the program and 29 were randomly selected, including eight in North Idaho. Six North Idaho child-care providers participated in the first year of the pilot in 2007. By next year, state officials hope the quality rating program will be available to all child-care providers who want to participate.

State officials say the voluntary rating program helps to compensate for the minimal regulations that exist for child care in Idaho. Child-care centers with fewer than seven children are not regulated

by the state, although a few cities, including Coeur d’Alene, have instituted their own day-care licensing laws.

That lack of regulation means no criminal background checks of staff and no health and safety inspections, said state Rep. George Sayler (D-Coeur d’Alene), who plans to introduce a bill in this year’s legislative session that would require licensing for centers caring for 4 or more children. However, in four years of trying, Sayler’s legislation has never passed out of the House health and welfare committee. He’s hopeful this year will be different.

“I think we’ve met all the objections we’ve encountered,” Sayler said. “I know how important it is for parents to have a safe and healthy environment to take their children to while they’re working.”

Providers participating in IdahoSTARS were evaluated by the state in the beginning of the year and were given suggestions on how to improve their quality, including safety, staff ratios and parental involvement. They also received 16 hours of training in Strengthening Families, a nationally acclaimed child-abuse prevention program that focuses on increased interaction among the families that use the child care.

“That to me has been the best outcome of all besides having a very safe playground,” said Barbi Harrison, administrator of Christ the King Child Development Center in Coeur d’Alene. “It’s actually become a support group. If a parent’s frustrated, they can talk to another parent and realize they feel the same way. We’ve opened up our doors and opened up more ideas about how to get our parents together.”

That’s in addition to the installation of $7,000 worth of pea gravel beneath the play structures in the playground to increase children’s safety when they fall. A state grant split the cost of the improvement with the child-care center, Harrison said.

Daystar Christian Daycare in Post Falls also boosted the safety of its playground, along with adding more staff to improve teacher-to-child ratios, said owner Jeane McKinley. The center also began providing parents with more information about what is happening day-by-day at the child care. As a result, parental involvement has increased, McKinley said.

“When parents can plan ahead, they’re more apt to participate,” she said. “Many times there are things we can do and we just haven’t thought about it.”

When the year is over, the participating child-care centers will be evaluated again and will receive a “STAR” rating, based on the total number of points they receive. Each center can decide for itself whether it wants to advertise that rating, Anderson said.