Choosing Child Care

When you need child care, you want to find a child care arrangement that will work well for your family, and one in which you are confident your child will receive love and good care. To those seeking child care, the Boston area presents an array of child care options with professional standards that are among the highest in the country. However, choosing child care can be challenging. Each option presents practical advantages and disadvantages, and requires different search strategies. Costs are high, and wait lists not uncommon. In addition, for many parents, the task of choosing child care arouses anxiety and sadness. Given these complexities, it is helpful to plan your search before you set out. This packet provides information related to each of the following steps:

Steps in choosing child care:

Assess your needs and those of your child. Consider your priorities: identify bottom-line requirements as well as areas where you can afford to be flexible. Become familiar with the various child care options. Determine which options could work for you, knowing that the quality of care varies within each, and that it may be to your advantage to search among several options to locate the best arrangement. Become well-acquainted with the correlates of quality in child care. Know what to look for and what to avoid. Develop a search strategy and stick to it. Give yourself the opportunity to compare and to choose among several carefully observed arrangements so that you can be confident in your final selection.

Also, the Center for Work, Family and Personal Life offers help at any step in your search, including:

• child care briefings, bimonthly sessions held at the Center;
• individual consultations, available via telephone, email, or office visit;
• specialized information packets on family child care; in-home care; temporary child care; playgroups and activity programs; and summer camps;
• program and provider listings, including family child care providers, child care centers, after-school programs, in-home referral agencies, and an MIT Babysitting List;
• a Boston-area summer camp database.