Ethnic community strategies and needs for immigrant and refugee child care

Trends in early childcare and development indicate that young children of immigrant households are less likely to be represented in quality programs designed to enhance child health and well-being. This puts these immigrant children at risk for poor educational and health outcomes later in life. Guilford County, North Carolina is an emerging new immigrant gateway community, and is home to over 65,000 immigrant and refugee families with children. Little is known about the early childcare beliefs, practices and needs of the parents/caregivers of these immigrant children. The “Ethnic Community Immigrant Child Care Strategies” project was an action-oriented community diagnosis partnership designed to engage both local university faculty and new immigrant communities and parents in assessing cultural beliefs and practices, problems/needs and solutions related to early child care and educational experiences. With the assistance of trained bicultural/bilingual facilitators, we conducted 12 focus groups with Mexican, Montagnard, and African (Sudanese, Liberian and Niger) immigrant and refugee parents with children 0 to 5 years old. The purpose was to identify the types of care and education their children were receiving; understand the values, priorities and needs related to child care and health; and identify the extent of parents' awareness of existing child care services and their perceptions of these services. This presentation will highlight the results of these discussions and present recommendations for strategies to facilitate participation in childcare programs. Implications for designing and implementing interventions to increase childcare provider capacity to serve immigrant and refugee populations will also be discussed.