High quality school-age child care builds upon the advantages of preschool "school readiness" efforts and leads the child towards the steadiness needed to maintain those advantages in the primary and middle grades. Response to the need for child care over the past decade has intensified. Government, business and private entrepreneurs have formed public-private partnerships to meet the ever increasing demand for child care. In spite of the large and growing investment, some areas of child care needs have been scarcely affected. School-age child care is prominent among these areas.
Unlike preschool child care, advocacy on the part of families for school-age child care facilities and funding for programs has been inadequate to make addressing this need a priority within communities. Despite the preference for after-school programs geared to the developmental learning and social needs of children, families most often are required to use resources in their own family and within the community to meet these needs. Families generally band together to enlist neighbors, relatives and older siblings as an arrangement of last resort. Too often these arrangements have proven to be less than optimal for children in that they may compromise safety and often cannot provide the variety of services that children of working parents require. Among the services included in high quality school-aged care are: 10 age-appropriate social and recreational experiences, 2) assistance with tutorials and homework, 3) transportation from school - if required, 4) consultation with parents around child observations and referral to other services, if appropriate (including sick child care) and, 5) child care services during school holidays and the summer months.
High quality programs assist parents and children by working together with the schools on behalf of the children in obtaining and maintaining the academic requirements of the school. These programs can provide a setting for program or parents sponsored enrichment for all enrolled children and for individual children. Program activities may include dance, music, scouting and interest clubs, among others. In addition, because families meet each other as they pick up children each day, they develop mutual support for one another as they consider the continuum of education and care needs of their children.
The consequences of not having high quality after-school programs impact the lives of children and families significantly. Families feel that a lack of high quality after-school programs contribute to delinquency, early sexual experimentation, early exposure and experimentation with tobacco and other substances, and school failure of children who are not already experiencing success in school.
The needs and opportunities expressed above encourage policy makers in communities and at the state level to seek new ways to provide funding for school-age child care programs. The problem of providing care for children from kindergarten through middle school effects every community. Poor communities are especially in need of increased school-age care.
The opportunity to couple school-age child care needs with states' active welfare reform efforts - the objective of which is to have all able adults in the work force - offers the most immediate way to bring this issue to the attention of policy makers.
In order to bring the capacity for school-age child care into better alignment with the need of these services, the following must happen: parents must be vocal in sharing their concerns for their children during those hours when they must work and when children are not in school; businesses must be encouraged to support the development of capacity and make high quality programs affordable to families; government (at all levels), communities and families must enter into a partnership to create a system of high quality child care services from birth through the middle grades for children; and public school buildings must become extended-care service sites for attending children.
School-age child care providers can help to meet the needs of children through sharing information with parents, businesses, government and schools to help them advocate for enhanced services.