Professionalism: The Link to Quality Care

Professionalism: The Link to Quality Care
by Sandra Griffin

While the term "quality" is often added to a call for expanded services in child care, little attention and fewer resources have actually been focused on the inextricable link between the quality of child care services and the quality of the caregivers. Research clearly indicates that there are significant risks for children in poor quality care. Further, research identifies caregivers as the single most important factor in the provision of good quality child care services.

Caregivers are critical to the development of a comprehensive, high quality child care system for two significant reasons:

they are the fulcrum on which "quality" rests; and
they are in the best position to provide the systemic checks and balances necessary to move the current child care system to one where good quality services are assured.

To assure quality, knowledgeable and experienced practitioners must monitor current practice and provide on-going feedback into the system, thereby continually enhancing our existing knowledge base on what constitutes "good" or "best" practice. Research clearly identifies post-secondary education specific to the field of early childhood education and care as a key variable in determining the quality of interactions between caregivers and children; caregivers without such training are less likely to be appropriately responsive and positive in their interactions with children.

While governments can implement regulations regarding training, who determines the content and quality of the training? Who monitors the training and is responsible for ensuring that it is actually providing the level of knowledge and expertise that is necessary? Who monitors the dynamic and powerfully influential relationship between the adults and children in a caregiving setting, ensuring that an optimum level of positive interactions is maintained? What are the standards of practice against which training and practice are judged?

There are increasingly complex issues that practitioners in the child care field must address on a daily basis. Drs. Spodek, Saracho and Peters state that with "each new addition there are new concerns, new purposes, new understandings, and new skills needed and new demands for professionalizing practice."¹¹ Just as in other related fields, be it education, health or human services, the knowledge-base upon which good child care practice is built is not static. Research and experience must constantly inform good practice. Keeping current with the "state of the art" is crucial to the maintenance of quality in the system.

Yet again the questions. Who is responsible for organizing professional development or in-service training opportunities? Against what standards of practice is the content of professional development and in-service training evaluated to determine their efficacy in meeting the needs of the diverse range of caregivers in a diverse range of child care settings, from family day care settings to integrated special needs centre-based settings? Who monitors the ability of practice to address the constantly emerging concerns? Who is responsible for ensuring that current research informs current practice and current practice informs future research?

In other fields these answers traditionally come from the professional body -- essentially the professional infrastructure that is accountable to the public in relation to the services being provided by the profession itself. According to Dr. Donald Peters¹² , the profession:

generates new knowledge necessary to advance good practice;
assumes major responsibility for the transmission of that knowledge to students preparing to enter the field; and
defines the relationship between possession of the desired knowledge and skills and entry into practice.

Dr. Peters further identifies the importance of "an on-going evaluation process for continuously monitoring professional performance which requires:

a set of ethical standards and basic operating procedures against which member performance can be measured; and
the availability of meaningful sanctions of self-policing."¹³

It is quite evident that the quality of child care services that Canadian children and their families need cannot be found in minimum, concrete, regulatable standards alone. If we are to have a child care system in Canada that can truly meet the needs of our children and families, that will promote positive developmental outcomes for children and provide support for families, then we must build the infrastructure -- the profession -- to develop and maintain the quality system that we seek.

Sandra Griffin is the associate coordinator of the Unit for Child Care, School for Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, and a past president of the Canadian Child Care Federation and the Early Childhood Educators of B.C.

This article first appeared in Interaction published by the Canadian Child Care Federation, Summer, 1995.

Posted by: the Canadian Child Care Federation, September 1996.