2021 Family Child Care Innovation Networks Award

What is the Family Child Care Innovation Networks Award?

This new award aims to highlight and strengthen the kinds of professional networks and reflective, collaborative activities that have been proven to enhance educators’ job satisfaction, wellbeing, and the quality of their practice. While in years past the Zaentz Initiative has used the Innovation Challenge to solicit new ideas and fresh thinking from across the country and field, we see an important opportunity to respond to the current moment, and our own research findings, in a meaningful way. This new award will help us support providers who are doing critical and innovative work across our state, at a time when connection and collaboration are more important than ever.

Awards will be given in amounts of up to $5,000. Award funds may be used to cover investments and expenses associated with building and sustaining community-based peer learning networks, including professional learning facilitators, trainers, or speakers; food or child care during network meetings; technology needed for remote meetings and collaboration; or curricular materials to support the work of the community of practice, among other things.

In addition to receiving funding, awardees will be invited to share their innovative practices at a virtual convening in the spring of 2021.

Responding to the rich racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity that is a hallmark of the family child care community, applications will be offered in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Chinese.

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Why a focus on family child care?

Family child care providers are an essential part of the early education and care ecosystem, and they have unique strengths that will make them critical to our pandemic response and recovery. These providers serve small, mixed-age groups of children – a configuration that may be especially in demand given public health concerns about large group sizes and a need for more feasible care options that serve siblings within families. Family child care providers also tend to be more affordable, flexible, and likely to be staffed by educators and caregivers who reflect the racial, ethnic, and linguistic composition of the communities they serve than other types of early education and care programs.

But in recent years, family child care providers have struggled to maintain viability. They have also been especially hard hit by the pandemic, threatening their ability to support children and families in the months ahead. In response to a recent survey of early educators and caregivers across Massachusetts, part of the Early Learning Study at Harvard, nearly all (87%) family child care providers reported their income had been affected, which was not the case among those in other provider types, including public preK and Head Start. Unsurprisingly, family child care providers also reported disproportionately high levels of stress and uncertainty about the future of their programs. Additionally, family child care providers often work long hours and balance multiple professional roles and tasks, and they are often professionally isolated compared to peers in center-based and more formal classroom settings.

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Why is the Zaentz Initiative offering this award?

The Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative seeks to be a leading connector for innovation and entrepreneurship in the field of early education. We recognize that new ideas are needed in our field, and we hope to use this award to highlight creative, effective, and provider-led approaches to peer learning. Reimagining the Innovation Challenge in this way also enables us to further our mission of promoting the knowledge, professional learning, and collective action necessary to cultivate optimal early learning environments and experiences.