Evaluation of Child Care Subsidy Strategies: Massachusetts Family Child Care Study

Publication Date: June 15, 2010
Current as of:

Introduction

This report presents findings from the Massachusetts Family Child Care study, a two-year evaluation of the impacts of an early childhood education program on providers and children in family child care. The program—LearningGames—is designed to train caregivers to stimulate children’s cognitive, language, and social-emotional development. The evaluation of LearningGames is one of four state experiments conducted as part of the Evaluation of Child Care Subsidy Strategies. The study is being conducted by Abt Associates Inc, with its research partners MDRC and the National Center for Children in Poverty of Columbia University, under a contract with the Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The goal of the evaluation is to provide information that states and local communities can use to inform their decisions about the use of child care subsidy and child care quality improvement funds.

The objective of LearningGames is to promote children’s cognitive and language development through learning opportunities provided by their caregivers. LearningGames focuses on increasing the frequency of rich language interactions between caregivers and children. This emphasis grows out of the evidence of the importance of oral language development in children’s understanding of words and concepts, in their ability to become competent readers, and in their long-term academic success and of the role played by rich language stimulation in promoting children’s development. This evaluation of LearningGames examines the effectiveness of the program in changing the behavior of the family child care providers and the developmental outcomes for the children who are cared for by providers trained on LearningGames.