Finding quality and affordable child care is difficult for families across the United States, and Santa Barbara County is no exception. At the Santa Barbara Foundation, we are dedicated to serving as a source of information for issues confronting the county and supporting the organizations that provide quality child care and family support services.
The average cost of care in Santa Barbara County is between $10,000 and $16,000 for infants and between $9,000 and $12,000 for preschoolers annually. However, when it comes to child care, it is not just the cost that matters, the quality of programs is also critically important. Research has consistently shown that children who attend high-quality programs, especially ages 0-5, achieve better outcomes.
“Children need high-quality child care to support their healthy brain and socio/emotional development. Parents need child care to go to work,” said Ben Romo, Executive Director of First 5, which is an organization that supports the learning and health of children, prenatal through age five, and their families. “This is both a child development issue and an economic issue.”
State licensure is primarily concerned with health and safety, and less concerned with high quality standards learning and social and emotional development. Thankfully, in Santa Barbara County a collaborative approach to quality improvement in child care settings has been underway. This effort – called Quality Counts – includes assessing programs, coaching them to standards of quality, supporting teacher training and education, and moving programs toward national accreditation. As a result, 43 percent of local center-based programs are nationally accredited, compared to a state and a national average of 6 percent.
This exciting work involves many key partners, but is primarily led by two agencies: the Santa Barbara County Education Office and Children’s Resource and Referral of Santa Barbara County. The Santa Barbara Foundation and First 5 have aligned their funding to support this collaborative approach to quality improvement. Aligning investments in the early years is one way for funders to help address these important community needs.
“By investing strategically with other funders like First 5, we better ensure that taxpayer and philanthropic dollars are spent in the most impactful and efficient manner possible,” said Ron Gallo, President and CEO of the Santa Barbara Foundation. “Part of our role as a community foundation is to understand the broader system so we know where investments are most needed and where they will be most impactful.”
In addition to leveraging philanthropic dollars, the Santa Barbara Foundation also conducted a survey with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Choose Children 2018 campaign that found that strong majorities of Santa Barbara voters support greater investments in programs that benefit California’s youngest children and would favor a candidate for governor who pledges to create a system of high-quality, publicly funded childcare and preschool programs.
To learn more about the efforts to help families find affordable and quality child care in Santa Barbara County, please contact Katie Torres, Communications and Policy Specialist for First 5 at ktorres@First5SBC.org.
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