Time to Care: Redesigning Child Care to Promote Education, Support Families, and Build Communities » (1st Edition)

In this important work, Joan Lombardi, one of Americas foremost experts on child care, shows how our current system is not meeting the needs of America's families and describes a vision for redesigning this system to promote healthy child and youth development. Both as an expert and as a parent, the author guides the reader through the problems that face the current child care system and outlines the possible solutions. Drawing on the most recent innovations from across the country, she offers fresh ideas for improving the quality and availability of child care, both for young children and those in after school programs.

From renewal of welfare reform to the administration's efforts to promote literacy, debate at both the state and federal levels about child care will continue for the foreseeable future. Joan Lombardi shows how to bridge the gap between early education and child care by taking advantage of the hours that children spend in care to encourage child and youth development and by creating a system of program and community supports to improve quality.

Library Journal

The first associate commissioner for child care in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and adviser to many national organizations, Lombardi provides a road map for mentally reframing and physically restructuring child care in this country. She makes her case by first exploring the history of education and child-care systems, explaining what went wrong, then quickly moving to what is needed and how to get it. She weaves together models of child development, countless studies from national educational organizations (e.g., ERIC, Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development), and case studies on local programs across the country to demonstrate the need to improve the quality and availability of child care for both preschool and school-age children. She discusses the staffing of child-care programs in depth and recommends using the time children spend in such programs to encourage positive development. We can do this, claims Lombardi, by perceiving this issue as an educational priority. The information is presented clearly and is supported by research and opinions from respected studies, educators, and policymakers. Appropriate for educators and child-care professionals; recommended for all libraries.-Deborah Bigelow, Leonia P.L., NJ Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.