Towards a

Towards a “Better Day”
by Sandra Griffin

Public and political debate about child care in Canada tends to focus exclusively on issues of availability, accessibility, affordability and accountability. It is generally accepted that child care services should be of “good quality,” and landmark studies such as You Bet I Care! have highlighted the inextricable link between the quality of the services and the quality of the practitioners providing the service. However, scant recognition has actually been given to how we can and must build an infrastructure of supports for these practitioners; one which promotes the knowledge, skills and competencies necessary to provide the level of quality care that all our children deserve. It is that infrastructure that is really the profession itself.

Caregivers are the fulcrum on which quality rests. Research quite clearly identifies them as the single most important factor in the provision of high quality child care services. However, caregivers in Canada are as fragmented, under-resourced and under-supported as the child care “system” itself.

While regulation and legislation can address some of the concrete attributes of quality such as child/staff ratio, group size, and health and safety practices, there are critical aspects of good quality care that cannot be regulated, such as the amount of positive interaction between the caregiver and the child. But beyond requiring training, how are the contents and quality of the training determined? Who sets the standards and monitors that training? Who evaluates practice and against what standards?

Beyond pre-service training, how do practitioners gain knowledge about new developments in their field? Knowledge is not static. As social structures change, so too are caregivers challenged to respond to these changes. Research and experience must constantly inform good practice because keeping current with the “state-of-the-art” is crucial to maintaining quality. But who is responsible for ensuring a link between research and practice?

In other fields – education, medicine, law – a professional body is accountable to the general public for the services provided by its members. A profession is a field of human endeavour with a well-defined body of knowledge containing principles common to the application of the knowledge and skill set, with practitioners knowledgeable and skilled in applying the principles in practice. A profession also generates new knowledge, transmits such knowledge to students entering the field, defines the standards for entry into practice and monitors professional performance against a set of ethical standards.

Early childhood care and education is a fledgling profession with a rudimentary infrastructure. We know ever more about what quality looks like. We have developed standards of professional practice, a code of ethics, self-evaluation tools. Conferences, workshops and seminars are plentiful. Technology makes information and knowledge accessible. So why do we still need to talk about professionalism?

Because it is not that simple. It has been noted that early studies on “professionalization” and the characteristics of “professions” were done by male sociologists studying men at work. Our field requires a different model—a model that reflects the unique characteristics of a profession that partners so closely with parents and the community in the care and education of our youngest citizens; a model that does not define a “profession” by who it excludes but rather seeks to be inclusive and supportive of moving all those who work in the field toward a “better day.”

And what is a “better day”? It is the day when the work is recognized and valued highly both by practitioners and by the public at large; the day when the value of the work is reflected in the pay and benefits; and the day when access to the knowledge, skill and competency development and related resources are available and accessible regardless of location or language—because children all over Canada need high quality early childhood care and education in many languages.

The dedicated people currently providing those services, and all those dedicated people coming behind them need all the support we can provide to do the best job—the job described in the First Ministers’ Agreement on Early Childhood Development, which ensures that “no child is left behind.” So we must work together to make sure that “no practitioner is left behind” as we continue on the journey toward a profession that offers the best quality of early childhood care and education for all of Canada’s children.

Sandra Griffin is the executive director of the Canadian Child Care Federation.

Interaction, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer 2001, p. 4.