324: The Greatest Benefits of Collaboration Between Home-Based and Licensed Child Care!

In this episode of Childcare Conversations, you’ll feel like you’re sitting down with two friends over coffee as they unpack the role of home-based childcare in our communities. They chat about the differences between regulated and unregulated care, the unique strengths of home providers, and how centers and home programs can support each other (not compete!). 

They also tackle tough topics like safety, stereotypes, and the importance of educating families. You’ll walk away with practical tips, fresh insights, and a renewed sense of how we can all work together for kids’ well-being. 

https://www.kxan.com/investigations/risks-to-children-why-texas-is-warning-about-unregulated-home-child-care/

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Transcript

Carrie Casey (00:05)
Are the home-based programs in your community your friends or your foes? Are they there to help you? Are you there to ruin their lives? How are you working with those people? This is one of those questions that is much more salient when we're dealing with a financially rough time. 2008, there were

home providers popping up everywhere. They were just popping up in the grass. Here they are, here they are, here they are, here they are. And we have seen that again in the past year or so. And so how does that affect your business positively or negatively?

Kate Woodward Young (00:39)
Hahaha!

Well, so

let's start, let's back up just a tad. And one of the things that I think is worth mentioning is part of the reason we decided to bring this to y'all as a podcast today, as an episode to talk about literally nationwide, right? This is absolutely a childcare conversation is because we're seeing more and more news media picking up things related to childcare. Now, most of us are familiar with

Minnesota. And I'm sure that that has sparked some of this research that's happening in other states. Sometimes it's because the states are doing goofy things with their budgets. Others it's because they're trying to pass regulations that don't make sense because the people trying to pass the regulations have never actually worked in childcare. And we are in a community where the focus became on in-home care.

listed, registered, and licensed, right? And so we wanted to share this and have this as a conversation. Carrie and I both started as in-home care. We were regulated in-home care. Okay.

Carrie Casey (02:02)
Well, I don't know if I started there. I was there

and then I left and then I came back. I started elsewhere and more injured. Yes.

Kate Woodward Young (02:10)
You've been everywhere.

But we've both done it. Let's put it that way. We have both done regulated care in home, regulated care. And it was one of the things I loved about the field is that you could be a single mom and take care of your own child and three other kids in the neighborhood or four other kids in the neighborhood, depending on ages. And you could actually support yourself.

⁓ This was something that I was involved in in Ohio, even in Central Texas when I moved to Texas. And so there's a lot of people who do a lot of really good things with intentional regulated in home care.

I say it that way because I don't know about you, Carrie, but I've definitely run into the folks who, ⁓ I'm only doing this for a few weeks to help out my insert neighbor, relative, family member. And 30 years later, they're still doing it. When we talked with all those folks in New Hampshire, we heard some awesome stories about that kind of passion of the folks that had started out helping their grandchildren or helping their children. And then now their grandchildren and now...

the community sees them as a real significant part. ⁓ we want to make sure that we're talking about it from the perspective of we know that these folks bring value to the families. Now we do have families, Carrie, what? That look at it in a whole different light. So what are some of the things that people need to really consider if you are a licensed center about collaborating, promoting, being a whistleblower or being the bad guy?

Carrie Casey (03:58)
I so I think that I wanna start with talking about how we work with people who are also regulated, right? So we're licensed, we're regulated. There may be homes, it depends on where you are as to what it's called when somebody is providing care in their home. Is it licensed? Is it registered? Is it listed? There may be other terms, but there are people who are like,

we're going to follow the rules. let's start with talking about those people. ⁓ Before we talk about the other ones, which is what the the news article that hopefully we'll remember to link in the show notes will be but

When we're talking about those people who are also regulated, they are not regulated as heavily as a center is because they can't have 250 kids at their house. And we all know that there are centers that have 250 kids. So there needs to be a higher level of supervision from the state if you're watching 250 kids than if you're watching six to 12, which is...

pretty much where regulation comes in is somewhere between four and 12 children can be watched in someone's home. My thought is that we should be partnering with them because I don't know about you, but I've definitely had people who sign up to come to my program and the parents are like, my kid needs socialization.

I am so worried when a parent says that in the tour. Because what that tells me, it may not be what they meant for it to say, but what I hear when they say, I really am so excited for them to come to your school because they need socialization. What I hear is your kid has been roughhousing with your pit bull and your Labrador.

And then you went to a family function and they tackled another kid and it made the parent realize that maybe their child needed to play with somebody who was not a hundred pounds ⁓ and a dog. So that's how I interpret it when they say that. But if that's-

Kate Woodward Young (06:16)
Well, it's funny because

my interpretation of that is, so the child's been home with grandma or grandpa in front of the television for the last two years, which we have a lot of 21, 22, 23. ⁓

Carrie Casey (06:26)
Yep, that could be too. So

Kate has her default response to that and I have my default response to that. But a lot of times, if that child has either one of those, them going into a classroom with 18 to 24 kids is gonna be a huge shock to them. And they're gonna hear words they haven't heard before like no.

Kate Woodward Young (06:33)
You

You mean like there

might be some behavior issues?

Carrie Casey (06:55)
Right, and it's not because the kid is a kid who is willfully defiant. They've just never been in a situation where they're having to negotiate with their age mates, with other kids their age. And so if they've gone from zero to your classroom of 18 and the kid is just getting swallowed up by your classroom and is having behavior issues or is crying all day, going to a smaller program,

for six months or a year, and then coming back to your program could be exactly the right fit for that family. Because they want their kid to have socialization, they're probably not gonna, for most parents, that six kids at someone's house isn't gonna feel like what they were wanting when they had that word socialization in their mind. So they're still gonna come back to your center. And.

Most home-based programs have age ranges that they're focused on. They have a niche. was infants through two when I had mine. I was like zero to two and I had a percentage of each eight, know, non-mobile. I would take one non-mobile baby at a time, two mobile babies and one to two toddlers. So that was my...

my breakdown, I would take five, but it depended on how mobile people were. ⁓ And that's not unusual. There's other programs that are like, no, no, no. And I take them until they walk. Once they're walking, they're out of here, cause I'm not dealing with that. There's other people who like, I don't take anybody who's not potty trained.

Kate Woodward Young (08:43)
Or I don't take anybody on a bottle. mean, because again, some folks it's going to be based, like you said, on age or developmental milestones. ⁓ Other folks it may just be like, I'm not doing bottles, right? Like if you're not going to eat real food or we've got food allergies and just healthcare issues, right? So there's also reasons why some folks might choose that smaller venue because of, you know,

less likely to be exposed to peanut butter or you know.

Carrie Casey (09:14)
Absolutely.

And so again, these are things that make it a great relationship with those home-based providers as it's a way for them to get clients into their program. It's a good way to help families who you're not the right fit for right now, but you might be down the road when they're closer to school age or they might stay at that.

family program until their school age, but the school age or the home based program doesn't have a bus and you have a bus. And so you'll go pick the kids up and that home based program. If you're doing what is best practice, you're involving that home based program in some of your events throughout the year. So that if you're, you know, I don't know this time of year, what is an event that might be coming up? Some programs are probably going to

be doing some sort of Easter something, teaching the toddler how to hunt eggs. Because I feel so sorry for a toddler, their first Easter egg hunt, they just get run over. We need to have some egg hunting drills. But you can.

Kate Woodward Young (10:16)
Absolutely.

But I think the other

thing that you mentioned that you kind of slid in there and it kind of like went right on through is ⁓ as a licensed facility. So in other words, you're not a home-based program. You know, go find some in your community and bring them in. Carrie used examples of some social activities. I'd like to use the examples of the training that you're already having. ⁓ Even your parent events, if you do parent trainings.

because I always think that's a great thing that every childcare center ought to be doing is parenting classes or how to be a parent of infants, how to be a parent of twins, depending on what's in the water in your neighborhood. All of those are things that I think that are worth including those family regulated in-home programs because we want

Carrie Casey (11:09)
you

Kate Woodward Young (11:20)
to build the capacity of the community. And I think that they, and we've got a lot of them in our group, right? And we've got folks, a lot of in-home providers who listen to our podcast. And so I'm sure you guys are probably nodding your head and being thankful that somebody isn't forgetting you and that we're not saying everybody's negative and that it's a bad thing because we don't feel that way at all. We want the home care.

providers to also go find licensed programs that you think may or may not match for that same reason. I, Carrie, you talked about this another time, is sometimes you're going to have programs where you guys are going to be right in line. And the other times you're going to have programs where you're as far apart as you can be. But that's a good thing because not every family that tours your program is going to be the right fit.

Carrie Casey (12:15)
And I'm just gonna throw one more thing out there that just popped into my head, which is if that home-based provider is sick or needs to do doctor's appointments or ⁓ needs a vacation, ⁓ then you can have a relationship with that home-based provider where the kids come to your center on those days or one of your staff goes and substitutes.

All of those things can be worked out and can be a positive for both sides. But now I want to talk about the other part. The people who have on purpose or accidentally decided to watch kids in their home and are not following the law. They are not listed, they are not registered, they are not licensed, and they should be.

And how many kids that is depends on your state and a whole bunch of those rules are getting rolled back or at least being proposed to roll back. ⁓ What was that Oklahoma that was like, yeah, as long as it's less than 15, or I don't remember the numbers, but that was kind of like, what, you're going to not have regulations for in-home care anymore? I don't know if that passed. It just kind of freaked me out when I saw it, but

That is part of what some states are doing to try to address the child care affordability crisis is that they're going to increase the number of programs that don't have regulations. What is the biggest problem with that statistically, Kate?

Kate Woodward Young (13:54)
Well, mean, statistically that's where major injuries and other things occur. But it's also, if I was a parent, I mean, this is the, this is your responsibility. I mean, this is a prime opportunity back for everybody. Regulated in-home care, regulated centers, get out in your community and educate the parents. Go find them before they need you so that they know why

and use the language why compliance is important why you need to be using licensed care make sure you know the statistics for your state if you don't know the statistics for your state you could probably look it up in chat or perplexity or gemini or one of the ai's but go check with the state if you still can't or you're still not sure you've got the right stuff check with the compliance alliance check with one place child care

both of those organizations and all of your state organizations know to your state knows the numbers for your state.

Carrie Casey (15:00)
And so the reason we want kids to be in regulated care is because

having someone come and inspect your building, even if it's once when you set up and then, you know, once a year or once every three years or whatever it is, but having someone walk through your building and look for safety hazards is very important because somebody's gonna go, ⁓ you need to have that cupboard underneath the sink locked and they go.

Well, that's my bathroom. That's not the kids bathroom. The kids are going to be in this other bathroom. And they're like, well, but if you're the one going into that bathroom to pee, who's watching the kids because there's no line of sight from that bathroom. And they go, well, they're OK for a couple of minutes while I'm peeing. And then the licensing rep will be like, no, ma'am, ⁓ no, you have to come up with a system where you can still see and hear the kids when you are peeing.

That was probably the biggest reason why I had an assistant in my home-based program is because I wanted to be able to pee without a door open or having to have, you know, a little video monitor to watch children while I would, no, I just needed to go to the bathroom. And so I had an assistant that came for a few hours every day and I just scheduled when I took liquids. I didn't need to go when they weren't there.

And a lot of people who offer home care do that. They're like, okay, cool. My spouse, my teenager, whatever is here at this time. I will be able to go to the bathroom at that time. ⁓ But if you're just grandma who was watching your grandkids, you don't think anything of letting your grandkids watch Sesame Street or watch Miss Rachel while you go to the bathroom. Well, if it's your...

Kate Woodward Young (16:55)
Or just leave, just

turn on PBS and leave it that way all day long. And you just let the kids run amok.

Carrie Casey (16:59)
Yeah, and if you're doing that for your one

or two grandkids, and usually they're at different ages, so the older one can kind of either get into some trouble or manage the younger one for that five minutes, that is different than if that grandma starts taking care of their children's friends' kids. So all of sudden now she's got five of them at different ages.

Kate Woodward Young (17:10)
Thank

Carrie Casey (17:26)
And it's been 20 years since she had kids and she had a different set of tools available 20 years ago or 30 years ago than we have today. And, you know, she could just wave a wooden spoon and kids knew what that meant. And maybe she had used the wooden spoon on her kids, but you can't do that when you got other people's kids. I'm just, that is a stereotype of grandparents watching kids.

⁓ and I'm not saying it's right.

Kate Woodward Young (17:55)
You mean they all

didn't just turn on MTV? Or country music television?

Carrie Casey (18:00)
Again,

these are the stereotypes we have of when grandparents are kids, ⁓ right? Is that they're going to use the TV a lot? ⁓ no, no, no. At my ⁓ dad's house, is give the child an iPad. ⁓ Very much. That's what every toddler needs is three hours with their grandparents and an iPad. ⁓ But

Kate Woodward Young (18:06)
That's not a stereotype, that's what my dad did. He'd just turn on CMT and Country Music Television.

Carrie Casey (18:29)
If that's three hours out of all of the hours in a week, it's no big deal. But if that's what's happening for nine hours a day, five days a week, we know that that's not quality care. That's not gonna prepare that child best for living a successful life. That's not gonna lay down the neural pathways they need. It's not what we need. So what do you...

as a person running a high quality care, what is your role when you hear through the grapevine that there's unregulated care in the neighborhood? What do they do?

Kate Woodward Young (19:10)
think you brought up a great

point earlier, Carrie, which is you got two choices. You got A choice and B choice. And A choice is going to them, being proactive, introducing yourself, and letting them know you know they're not regulated, and offering to support them. There is also the secret shopper version, which is you just pick up the phone and you call licensing and say, hey, this is an address of what I'm pretty sure is an unlicensed.

child care facility or home. I don't really care what you do. I don't care if it's based on timing, your comfort level with confrontation. Just do it because we want the kids to be safe. This is all about the children being safe. And in most states, the cost of making your program licensed or regulated is not going to increase your rates.

other than maybe you now can't have 15 kids ⁓ in your location or maybe it's you can't have anybody in your location because maybe you have a dog or you have a room that's just not like where you were going to have the kids do that just doesn't work safety wise. Yeah.

Carrie Casey (20:25)
isn't safe, you have an

open swimming pool. you know, I mean, I knew plenty of programs that were out in the country and it was like, okay, we're gonna go walk into the creek. ⁓ And that can be fun. But if the kid, if you don't have good systems to keep an eye on the children and one of them just walks out of your unfenced backyard and wanders down to the creek, that's a problem.

So, and they need to know about that. I mean, that's my whole thing is that if somebody is in unregulated care, I'm gonna presume they did not know because presuming otherwise will just make me crazy. So I'm gonna presume they did not know. And I'm gonna always err on the side of going and letting them know because that is a level of conflict I'm comfortable with. But ⁓ a whole lot of you are gonna be like, no.

They broke the law, I'm calling the authorities on them. And that is your choice. You do what makes you feel comfortable to keep children in your community safe.

Kate Woodward Young (21:34)
Absolutely. So get out, be an advocate for quality care, be an advocate for regulated care. Speak to the families and help the families in your community understand the importance of compliance. This is a great opportunity for your elevator speech, for you to get out there and share what you're passionate about in those Kiwanis clubs, Lions clubs, Rotary clubs, Chamber of Commerce, all the clubs.

Carrie Casey (21:56)
Book clubs. ⁓

church

groups, all of that, Mothers to Multiples, know, the LeLech League, the Bradley classes, Lamaze classes, all of these places. But also, I just want to say, if somebody has gone to your website and you don't have a thing on your website that they can download that has 10 things to look for when you're looking for childcare, you're behind the times, honey.

you need to have a thing that they can download that is here are 10 things to look for when you're looking for quality care and in there needs to be, it needs to be licensed or regulated. And what are the number of humans in a building that requires licensing so that they know and why that's important. Sorry.

Kate Woodward Young (22:43)
Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. If you do not already subscribe to our newsletter, so we send out a newsletter twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the same day those episodes drop. We would love you to join us. Just go to www.childcareconversations.com and we will see you in a few days.