ILR Receives Award for Child Care Study
December 7 2007
Buffalo Child Care Means Business recognized for importance to economic development
Cornell University’s ILR School has been honored by the Child Care Resource Network as its 2007 Corporate Award Winner. ILR and its Workforce, Industry and Economic Development (WIED) group were recognized for their role in the study, Buffalo Child Care Means Business. The Child Care Resource Network is a not-for-profit organization committed to the development of quality early care and education.
Buffalo Child Care Means Business, a collaborative action research project, is part of a statewide network reframing child care as part of the infrastructure of economic development by building partnerships at the community level. Conducted in spring 2006, the study of 117 downtown Buffalo employers includes original empirical evidence that reinforces the necessity of a well designed network of high quality child care services in constructing a top quality downtown business environment.
The Buffalo study, authored by Lou Jean Fleron and Reggie Grogan of Cornell University ILR, is rooted in the work of Professor Mildred Warner of Cornell’s Department of City and Regional Planning. As part of Cornell’s Linking Economic Development and Child Care Research Project, Professor Warner quantified the significant economic multiplier effects of the child care and early education industry across New York State.
Commenting on the significance of the corporate award, Grogan said: “The recognition by the Child Care Resource Network emphasizes the importance of looking at quality child care and early education as an important economic sector. With ILR’s mission of advancing the world of work, we seek to improve opportunities for today’s workforce – the parents – through quality child care programs and at the same time, develop tomorrow’s workforce – the children – by providing them an early foundation for success.”
The work of the Buffalo Quality Child Care Team goes well beyond the completion of the study. Since October, public hearings sponsored by the New York State Assembly Standing Committees on Labor, Children & Families and Social Services have been held throughout the state on access to quality child care for working families. ILR’s Grogan and Deb Lauria, representing the Buffalo Child Care Coalition, testified before the Honorable Susan V. John and others on the value of quality child care for working families. The Buffalo study was cited not only in their testimony, but in other testimony as well.
In addition to advocacy, efforts continue to implement other recommendations of the Buffalo study. Funding is being sought to create an employer’s guide to child care options, a tool to educate employers so they may proactively assist their employees with child care issues.
The ILR School has also been tapped as the independent evaluator of the Working Parents for a Working New York initiative, a program providing a subsidy for quality child care for up to 170 New York City workers and workers of subcontracted agencies earning 275% of the poverty line and below.
ILR researchers will study the effect child care subsidies have on job performance and retention. The program, both the subsidies and study, is funded by the New York City Council and administered by the Consortium of Worker Education (CWE), a private, non-profit agency that provides a wide array of employment, training, and education services. The CWE encompasses a consortium of 46 major New York City Central Labor Council affiliated unions, representing over 1.4 million New York City workers.
