Strengthening the Home-Based Child Care Sector
Globally, millions of children are in home-based, non-parental care arrangements. In low-and middle-income countries, children are 3 times more likely to be in home-based rather than center-based care. Home-based child care (HBCC) bolsters economies by supporting women’s economic empowerment and helping children develop and reach their full potential. Despite its prevalence and critical importance, HBCC is under-supported, underregulated, and underfinanced.
ECDAN, in partnership with Spring Impact, Echidna Giving, Jubilee Foundation, UBS Optimus, ELMA Foundation, and Imaginable Futures is hosting a new HBCC collaborative. The collaborative seeks to test and scale support programs for HBCC providers in three different locations. These support programs will allow providers to increase the quality of, and expand access to, childcare services. The collaborative will also establish a global learning community to share knowledge and resources.
Strengthening and expanding support programs for home-based child care providers will:
- Improve skills of and empower HBCC providers
- Improve development outcomes for children in HBCC
- Enable women to enter into or expand their participation in paid work as child care providers are able to expand their services
The first phase of the project is focused on three geographies: Nairobi, Kenya; Kigali, Rwanda; and Delhi, India. From January 2022-July 2023, the HBCC collaborative will convene and mobilize all the stakeholders in the HBCC ecosystem in these three locations through “Spark Grants.” It will also begin to develop and pilot solutions to challenges that have presented the scaling of HBCC support systems in those 3 geographies.
Through the global learning community, lessons learned during the first phase will be shared, laying the foundation for replication of the initiative in additional geographies.
To learn more about home-based childcare and the evidence behind the success and importance of support programs, please reference the report prepared by Spring Impact and generously funded by Echidna Giving, Porticus Foundation, and Imaginable Futures: Support Programs for Home-Based Child Care: a Global Study