Child Care Facilities

More and more children go to child care when they are young.  And they spend many hours at child care.  IKE wants to work with child care facilities in low income area to help them improve the care by reducing environmental threats.  IKE would work closely with IDEM to help these facilities participate in IDEM's 5-Star Environmental Recognition Program for Child Care Facilities as the mechanism to succeed.  The program recognize leadership and helps them use the recognition as a marketing tool.  But the work involves extensive one-on-one work with the facilities. IKE lacks the resources to make this happen.  IKE continues to seek resources for the project.

The following is derived from IKE's grant application for funding by EPA's Environmental Justice Through Pollution Prevention program.

A Customer’s View: Picture yourself as a new mother. You have a new baby in your arms looking to you to meet virtually all of his/her needs. Yet, you cannot meet those needs without money. Government support will help but is limited in amount and duration. So you need to look for a job or go back to the one you had before you went on maternity leave. You make the tough choice to put your baby in child care – well aware that your baby will probably stay in child care until he or she is ready for school.

Living in an old home without air conditioning in an urban area, you know your baby is at a greater risk than most children to have severe asthma attacks, get lead poisoning, or develop a compromised immune system from the environmental tobacco smoke and the urban air soup that you both breathe every day. You want a child care facility that recognizes these risks and goes that extra step to protect your children from environmental threats.

So how do you find the best child care facility? How do you find one that will provide a nurturing environment AND one that keeps environmental threats to your baby’s health to a minimum? You don’t have the time to become an environmental expert. You need a simple system to help you make sound choices. Choices that you know will affect your child’s future.

A Facility Director’s View:  Now, picture yourself as a director of a child care facility in a low-income or people-of-color community. Your operation is essentially a small business, but your charge is more important than fixing an automobile or growing a crop – you must take care of many children each with unique needs that must be met. While your facility is directed by an inner city church, you know it could just as easily be a for-profit business, a high school helping teenage mothers, or a community development organization that makes the decisions.

You constantly remind yourself that you are in a growth industry due to welfare reforms and more single parent households. But you don’t see any of the positive trappings of a growth industry. Your facility is in an old building with limited sources of capital to renovate it. Your ability to raise prices is limited by the funding that your clients are able to pay - an amount that is strongly dependent on what the government will pay. So you employ staff at a low wage and struggle to keep them on the job knowing that their commitment to helping children is a major reason they stay.

While you are not an environmental expert, you know that there are many environmental threats that can affect the children in your care. You must keep pests, especially cockroaches, away, so you arrange for pesticides to be used regularly. You have every reason to suspect that lead is in the paint, asbestos in the floor tile and insulation, and radon in the air. You also have heard that the old utilities may have polychlorinated biphenyls in the lighting ballasts and mercury in the thermostat and flourescent light bulbs. And when you look at the material safety data sheets for the cleaning and maintenance chemicals, you wonder whether there are safer alternatives. Finally, you struggle to keep good staff that won’t smoke when the kids are around.

Ignoring the problems is an option. While the State closely regulates only 600 of the more than 4000 child care facilities in the state, there are few regulations on child care facilities operated by ministries. And the environmental standards are often ambiguous. Ignorance often looks like a viable strategy.

But you know better. And you are in this business to help children. You sense you could fix many of these problems, but you need someone to help you understand them and walk you through the solutions. And you need someone to help you articulate the needs and solutions to your board. Finally, you want to see some incentive to move beyond ignorance: incentives that will help you attract new customers. You want to be able to demonstrate to families considering your facility that it is a leader - that it is striving to reduce environmental threats to children. You have marketing materials but how do you convey your leadership effectively?

The Tool to Succeed:  The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) has developed a program that will meet the needs of the child care facilities and their customers. It is the Indiana 5-Star Environmental Recognition Program for Child Care Facilities.

Through the program, facilities can learn how to reduce environmental threats to children, be recognized for their performance, and enhance their marketing efforts to customers concerned about children’s health. And the system is designed so that they can participate with a minimum of capital investment. Hard work and commitment can usually get a facility three of the five stars.

Potential customers also benefit. They can easily identify those child care facilities that have demonstrated leadership by seeing who is participating in the program. And they can use the number of stars as a rough gauge to compare facilities. While the system will not be able to address every issue, it would provide an excellent starting point for a discussion between the customer and the child care facility.

Even if most facilities do not participate, the program has the indirect benefit of increasing awareness across the industry and among customers. A facility may choose not to participate in the program, but it will be harder for it to ignore the issues. IDEM’s success with other 5-star programs has indicated that if enough facilities participate (typically 20% of the facilities), the industry’s overall performance increases. The program effectively redefines expectations.

IDEM’s program consists of two parts.

• A recognition program for child care facilities that go beyond the environmental health protection requirements. This recognition program includes:

• A system to identify and prioritize the environmental threats that may be present at the facility;
• Benchmarks for performance that rely heavily on pollution prevention to evaluate how effectively the facility is reducing these threats;
• A three-tiered system to encourage facilities to continue to improve their performance; and
• Official recognition by the state that can be used to inspire staff and attract new customers.

• A guidance manual to help the child care facilities fully understand the state and federal compliance requirements. A facility cannot go beyond compliance until it reaches full compliance. This manual provides an integrated, comprehensive look at the regulatory requirements that relate to environmental threats. The manual addresses regulations by the following agencies:

• Environmental standards administered by EPA and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management;

• Worker protection standards administered by the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration;

• Health standards administered by the Indiana State Department of Health;
• Fire safety standards administered by the Indiana Fire and Building Services Commission; and

• Child protection standards administered by the Family and Social Services Administration.

However, instead of addressing the standards regulation-by-regulation, the manual is organized in a manner that integrates the regulations into a clear, consistent strategy. With it, the facility director can address all of the regulations that deal with a particular threat or operation in a seamless manner without needing to understand the intricacies of the underlying regulations. In essence, they can get the job done without needing to know how to pronounce RCRA.

The guidance manual also provides education materials and supports the recognition program by providing the facility director with important background materials and steps to meet the performance benchmarks.

IDEM developed this program with the support and direction of the aforementioned state agencies as well as local health departments, state trade associations for the child care industry, and other interested parties. Five child care facilities served as pilots. Two of the facilities were in low-income and people-of-color communities. See attachment under Item #11-A for a list.

Indiana’s First Lady, Judy O’Bannon, an outspoken advocate for children in Indiana, rolled out the program at a press conference in December of 1998. See attachment under Item #11-B for article on the press conference. Applications were accepted in March of 1999 with more than 60 applications received. Announcements of those recognized will occur soon.

IDEM provides significant technical assistance to child care facilities that express an interest in the program including conducting no-cost, lead-based paint risk assessments, integrated pest management guidance, and an confidential overall facility review. Two environmental managers spend much of their time on the program.

Project Plan:  This project will be done in full cooperation with IDEM. It will be designed to complement and enhance IDEM’s work. It will focus on three areas:

• Education Support: IKE will develop and distribute a video to help staff at child care facilities understand the environmental threats, the compliance requirements to reduce those threats, and the benchmarks for performance to receive recognition. The manual is helpful but a picture conveys much more. And many of the staff may not be able to read the manual. Facilities providing extensive support to low-income and people-of-color communities will receive the video at no cost. Other facilities will be expected to purchase the video at a nominal fee to cover production costs.

• Confidential Guidance: IKE will work with child care facilities in low-income and people-of-color communities to encourage them to participate in the program. Many of these facilities are struggling to keep up with day-to-day tribulations. They need someone to hold their hand and explain the program to them – someone to walk them through the program.

IDEM strives to fill this role, but there are barriers. Many child care facilities are leery about contacting the state for fear that the spotlight of regulatory scrutiny will shine on them and disrupt their operations. They may have a topnotch program but they are not confident enough in their performance to take a chance. Even IDEM’s promise of confidential assistance is not enough to overcome this fear for many facilities.

As an independent, grass roots organization, IKE can provide critical assistance to review their operations and help them get into the program. IKE will contact, either by phone or personal visit, most of the child care centers and ministry-operated child care facilities in low-income and people-of-color communities and work with them one-on-one help them make the decision whether to participate. Even those choosing not to participate will benefit from the consultation by getting a better understanding of the issues.

• Marketing Assistance: IKE will work with each of the participating child care facilities serving low-income and people-of-color communities to help them market their status as a 5-star participant. This marketing will be tailored to the needs of each facility. Without a strong marketing push, the facility may not get a strong enough incentive to maintain its leadership. IDEM’s experience with its other 5-star programs is that facilities need positive feedback from customers and potential customers to continue in the program.

IDEM does an excellent job at helping participating facilities improve their environmental performance. It also provides basic marketing tools but lacks the resources to provide the hands-on assistance that many facilities need. And their expertise is limited in the area of hands-on marketing assistance to facilities. In addition, the tools may not be useful in low-income or people-of-color communities without significant adaptation. Finally, IDEM, as a representative of the state and an evaluator of the applications, needs to maintain some distance and objectivity, especially when it comes to helping one facility get a marketing advantage over a competitor.

IKE will provide the expertise and advice to help the facilities develop marketing materials that shine. While it will not provide the production support, many facilities already have that access. They need expertise in marketing environmental performance.