Does place matter for healthy early child environments?

The current study examines the relation of the location of early childhood child care centers and its quality to its safe and healthy early childhood environments. As part of the state’s Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS), child care center environments are rated on multiple environmental domains. Towards this study, the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale’s (ERS) personal care routine subscale scores, specific to health and safety practices is used. Our hypothesis is that (1) there is a wider variation in scores on the personal care routine subscales in high poverty areas compared to non-poverty areas, and (2) the subscale scores will be higher for 3 - 5 star rated centers (higher-quality) versus 1 - 2 star rated centers. Results from preliminary analyses of two cohorts, cohort 1 (centers located at a poverty level below 100% FPL; N = 72) and cohort 2 (located at a poverty level of 150% FPL or above; N =554), showed that the average subscale score for the two cohorts were not varied as expected, 2.13 and 2.06, respectively. Towards this, we are creating subgroups of cohort 2 and comparing to cohort 1. As hypothesized, irrespective of the cohorts, centers with a higher-quality rating on average scored higher on personal care routine demonstrating improving social, and physical child care environments through health and safety standards. Results show that towards improving the quality of child care to reflect the needs of our youngest children, the issues of poverty, quality of classrooms and location are important to consider.