Daycare center for babies: KinderCare | Child Daycare Centers & Early Education Programs

Child Care – ZERO TO THREE

No family should pay more than they can afford for the child care they need and their baby deserves.

Child care is an essential building block in the foundation of our families’ and nation’s future. Access to affordable, high-quality care ensures parents can go to work and school confident that their babies and toddlers are receiving equitable, nurturing early learning experiences.

Early learning means children begin kindergarten ready to learn and succeed. Increasing access helps more babies and toddlers, including those with delays and disabilities, get the developmental support they need.

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In most states, the cost of child care exceeds the cost of college tuition.

Why It Matters

The high cost of out-of-home child care in America is a burden for most families. And despite the high costs, the majority of early childhood educators are significantly underpaid for the highly-skilled work they do.

For many families, grandparents and other friends or family members fill a critical need providing regular child care that is trusted, affordable, and accessible. In fact, one in four children under age 5 are cared for by grandparents while their parents work or attend school. Getting child care right means supporting all caregivers, whether paid or unpaid. 

By the Numbers

When parents lack safe, high-quality child care, they either can’t work or risk leaving their children in unsafe or poor-quality settings. Neither is a good alternative. Parents exit the workforce and leave gaping holes in the economy, supply chains, and essential services. The system is fundamentally broken, and the healthy development of our children is at stake. 

More than half of children under the age of 3 spend time each day cared for by someone other than a parent. 

The average child care provider in the US makes $12 per hour and most do not receive benefits. 

On average, Black families in the US spend 56 percent of their income on child care, reflecting past and present systemic racism and barriers to critical resources.  

Just 17 percent of qualifying families and only 4.2 percent of families with low to moderate income who could benefit actually receive child care assistance they qualify for.

The average child care provider in the US makes $12 per hour and most do not receive benefits. 

Sources: ZERO TO THREE (2017, September 6). Infant-toddler child care talking points. Long, H. (2021, September 19). ‘The pay is absolute crap’: Child-care workers are quitting rapidly, a red flag for the economy. The Washington Post. Novoa, C. (2020, June 29). How child care disruptions hurt parents of color most. Center for American Progress. U.S. Government Accountability Office (2021, February 18). Child care: subsidy eligibility and receipt, and wait lists.

Our Impact

ZERO TO THREE has a proven track record improving the state of child care in our country. Our Critical Competencies for Early Childhood Educators courses help staff, organizations and agencies create a knowledgeable workforce.

Our Think Babies campaign is advocating for Congress to pass comprehensive child care legislation similar to the Child Care for Working Families Act, which would provide affordable, high-quality child care for families with low and moderate income as well as provide training for early childhood educators to improve the quality of their care. 

Help us make affordable, high-quality child care a reality for families across the country.

Unlike K-12 education, which is largely funded through public dollars, the United States places the majority of the burden for paying for child care on parents of young children, subsidized by the low wages of the early educators who provide care.

Take action for child care

Related Resources

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Quality child care prepares babies for future learning and success.

When babies don’t get what their growing brains need to thrive, they don’t develop as they should. This leads to lifelong developmental, educational, social, and health challenges.

why early learning is critical

Child Care Licensing Information

CDSS Programs Community Care Licensing Child Care Licensing How to Become Licensed CCC Licensing Information

A Child Care Center (or Day Care Center) is usually located in a commercial building. Non-medical care and supervision is provided for infant to school-age children in a group setting for periods of less than 24 hours. This includes:

• Child Care Centers

• Infant Care Centers

• Toddler Programs

• School-age Centers

• Child Care Centers for Mildly Ill Children (a child care facility for children that have short-term mild illnesses)

VIDEO: Is a Child Care Center the Right Business for Me?

1. You must attend an orientation.

Orientations are offered online and in-person. In-person orientations are scheduled on a regular basis throughout California.

There is an orientation fee and it is nonrefundable, so be sure that you meet the qualifications for a license before you sign up for an orientation.

You may sign up for an online orientation, or an in-person orientation by contacting your local Regional Office. The Regional Office directory will show you what counties each Regional Office covers. To see an orientation schedule for your area, click here: Orientation Schedules.

2. You must be familiar with all Child Care Center licensing laws and regulations.

3. You must complete and submit all the information and forms required in the application packet.

We will not accept your application until after you have completed the orientation. There is an application fee that is nonrefundable.

4. If you are ready to sign up for an orientation, please view the orientation schedules and contact your local licensing office or register for an online orientation.

If you are interested in getting a Family Child Care Home license, please visit the Family Child Care Home Licensing page.

Contact Us

Child Care Licensing Program
744 P Street, MS T9-15-48
Sacramento, CA 95814

Local Regional Offices

Inyo and Del Norte Counties
(Family Child Care Homes Only)

Child Care Advocates – (916) 654-1541
[email protected]

CCLD Complaint Hotline
1-844-LET-US-NO (1-844-538-8766)
[email protected]
Information regarding filing a complaint

Quick Links

• Child Care Transparency Website (Licensing Facility Inspection Reports)
• Quarterly Updates
• Child Care Advocate Program
• Child Care Licensing Orientations
• Help Paying for Child Care
• California Background Check Process
• Livescan Application Process & Fees
• TrustLine
• Megan’s Law  
• Adam Walsh Information
• Laws and Regulations
• Forms

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Kindergarten in your pocket – Smart School Pro

The Smart School Pro startup was organized by Elena Ignatieva, the former owner of the private kindergarten Kid’s Estate (sold to a French company in 2019). When it came time to scale up the project a few years ago, it turned out that for the success of new gardens, all you need to do is find specialists of a similar level. But in the labor market they are in great deficit.

Then they decided not to scale the business, but the processes taking place in it. But the main thing was to preserve what people in principle turn to private gardens for – personal attention to the child.

It was the approach centered on the child and his interests that became the basis of Smart School Pro, an innovative platform that combines all the pedagogical and organizational functions of a kindergarten in a single interface.

SMART SCHOOL PRO for parents

Parents of babies, especially mothers, can often be found making a list of what a baby should be able to do by one, two, four. This is understandable: you want to quickly find out what your son or daughter will be like, and most importantly, not overlook deviations from the norm that can lead to serious problems in the future.

But the main tests have been passed – the child went, spoke and assembled the pyramid. And the further, the longer the list, more and more skills do not coincide with reality – something has already been mastered for six months, but something is not given categorically. And most of the mothers lose interest, decide that the norm is too vague a concept and how many people, so many opinions. And then everyday worries take their toll. And you have to remember about the norm only at the moment when the deviation in some area is already visible to the naked eye and you have to collect the coordinates of experienced neuropsychologists and neurologists from familiar ones.

Smart School Pro diagnostics – assessment of a child’s development by 15 indicators

But the practice of Smart School Pro shows that it was possible to solve some of the problems that interfere with admission to school or unexpectedly appear in the second grade, it was possible with the help of an ordinary kindergarten teacher garden. The one that alone deals with 35 children has long burned out professionally and, as it seems to parents, is seriously developing the skills of the wards only under the vigilant supervision of the head of the preschool educational institution. You just need to give her the right tool.

Until the age of seven, a child’s brain is actively formed, there are patterns and a general logic of its development, which neuropsychologists are well aware of. However, in reality, the development process occurs unevenly, individual characteristics may appear that do not fit into the conventional norm. To notice them, you need to constantly monitor the child. It is logical to do this in a kindergarten, where children receive preschool education and are under the supervision of a teacher. These conditions are sufficient to organize diagnostics and monitoring — the main analytical modules of our program.

What is it? Diagnostics Smart School Pro – assessment of the child’s development in 15 indicators: thinking, memory, attention, perception, imagination, speech skills, general awareness, volition, communication skills, social-playing skills, everyday skills, general motor skills, fine motor skills, learning motivation, emotional intelligence.

Diagnostics allows you to identify not only serious deviations, but simply areas that need to be actively worked on in a given period of a child’s development. In Smart School Pro, not one specific child undergoes diagnostics, but most of the pupils of the preschool educational institution, so educators can adjust the level of the overall workload, and classes for specific children, and for the group as a whole.
In all kindergartens with which we worked, we met wonderful teachers. People who want to grow professionally, systematically develop children. As soon as they got acquainted with our developments, they wanted to move on, get access to new sections of the platform, often helping to concretize the task for developers.

Speaking of methods. If it seems to parents that the teacher is biased towards their child, with the help of Smart School Pro, you can adequately assess his abilities. There is no place for subjectivity in both diagnostics and monitoring; all questions in a test, not a descriptive form, were developed by serious industry experts. So the results of diagnostics in the garden will not have to be hidden. On the contrary, you need to come to school with them in order to continue working on the development of the child.

What is it? Pedagogical monitoring is an express method that allows you to assess how well the kindergarten program has been mastered by the group as a whole and by each child individually. Monitoring allows you to select from the group those children who experience difficulties in mastering the program for each skill or type of activity.

Since classes in kindergarten are group classes, and when using Smart School Pro, analytics covers all children, one can also judge the effectiveness of a particular preschool program both for the entire kindergarten and for each group. This will provide an opportunity to draw conclusions for both the kindergarten management and methodologists who develop educational programs.

SMART SCHOOL PRO – Kindergarten

If you want to confuse the head of the kindergarten, you can ask what her ideal working day should look like. But if you go from the opposite, that is, ask what this ideal day does not imply, then for sure among the first “not” there will be reports that take time, effort and energy.

Smart School Pro is a cloud service that can be integrated with other platforms used by preschool educational institutions. Any lists can be loaded into the program and the necessary information can be entered when there is time for it. For example, you can enter data not at once at the end of the month, but during the day in a convenient mobile application that is always at hand. Together with monitoring and diagnostics, this makes it possible not to explain to parents in general terms which areas of development require special attention, but to present specific facts, to monitor the development of children in real time.

Our cooperation with the kindergarten in Staraya Russa has given a stunning result. According to the estimates of the kindergarten employees, they saved about 600 hours of working time with a single diagnosis (note that there are 285 children in the kindergarten, half of which – 130 – with developmental features). Such “cuts” are held at least twice a year.

Speaking of communication. Smart School Pro gives educators the opportunity to get away from general chats and build communication with each parent directly. This helps to minimize conflicts and not miss important messages. It is possible to make general mailings, post ads on a virtual board. Most importantly, you can be sure that nothing will be lost, and only up-to-date information will be sent to parents, the entire communication history for the period the child was in kindergarten, including recommendations, assignments, and a photo archive, will be saved.

SMART SCHOOL PRO — to the state

The Smart School Pro service has been used since 2020 as a diagnostic tool in kindergartens in Moscow, Arzamas, Staraya Russa, Khabarovsk and Perm regions, Tambov and Sverdlovsk regions. The number of children who have been diagnosed already allows us to draw certain conclusions about the development not only in the kindergarten, but also in the region.

We have a hypothesis that the conditional norm of development of preschool children differs at the level of the regions of our vast country. But no one took this issue seriously. Deep mass analytics based on big data will make it possible to form profiles and create child development standards for various federal districts, which will take into account the peculiarities of their development.
In addition, it should be taken into account that, according to the RAMP Health Science Center, about 80% of modern children are born with developmental problems and poor health. About 30% of them require comprehensive rehabilitation. Such children need constant – three times a year – diagnostics of psychophysical development. It is realistic to provide it with the help of a mobile application, but it is not possible to find the appropriate number of narrow specialists. The platform can help close the need for highly qualified personnel in the field of preschool age pedagogy and psychology in the regions.