The Least Supported Workforce: Understanding Professional Support Among Home-Based Child Care Providers Serving Infants and Toddlers

Background and Purpose: Home-based child care (HBCC) accounts for a significant proportion of nonparental child care arrangements for young children in the United States, particularly for infants and toddlers. More than three million children ages 0 to 3 receive care through HBCC providers, who disproportionately serve underrepresented and under-resourced populations (living in rural areas, lower-income households, and communities of color). At the same time, the supply of these providers has declined dramatically over the past decade. Prior research indicates that professional support is associated with the retention of child care providers and program care quality. However, HBCC providers receive considerably less scholarly attention in professional support compared to their center-based counterparts. The conceptual structure of professional support and its lived meaning among HBCC providers serving infants and toddlers remains poorly understood. This leaves a critical knowledge gap for informing programs and policies aimed at retaining and supporting this workforce. This study addresses that gap by identifying key dimensions of professional support among HBCC providers serving infants and toddlers and examining how providers experience that support in their daily practice.

Methods: We employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Phase I involved secondary analysis of the 2019 NSECE home-based provider survey. The analytical sample was restricted to listed HBCC providers regularly caring for infants and toddlers (N = 3,729). Professional support was measured using nine items covering access to health and safety training, family support resources/mental health consultation, health/nurse consultation, home visitor/coach support, community-sponsored workshops, college coursework, peer meetings, professional organization membership, and professional development (PD) partnerships. Categorical principal components analysis (CATPCA) was used to identify underlying support dimensions. Components were retained based on the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalues ≥ 1), item loadings ≥ .30, and interpretability of the concept. Phase II consisted of semi-structured interviews with seven licensed/registered HBCC providers serving infants and toddlers. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis to examine providers’ experiences with, facilitators of, and barriers to professional support.

Results: CATPCA identified two components of professional support that collectively explained 72.3% of the variance: Formal PD Services (61.3%), capturing structured, expert-delivered support, and Community of Practice (10.9%), reflecting relational and network-based support. Qualitative findings expanded on the quantitative results by revealing that, given the unique nature of the home as a care setting, professional support extends beyond formal organizations and peer provider networks. Providers drew on a multilevel support ecosystem that also encompassed the communities, parents, and their own personal support systems. Key facilitators included multi-modal service delivery, proactive outreach, and well-being check-ins. Key barriers included working alone, feeling unheard by policymakers, slow service responsiveness, lack of funding, long work hours, and fearing for the future.

Conclusions and Implications: Professional support for HBCC providers serving infants and toddlers is multidimensional, extending beyond formal structured services to encompass relational networks embedded across multiple ecological levels. To strengthen HBCC as a pillar of the early childhood system, policymakers and program developers should prioritize support infrastructures that are multi-modal, sustainably funded, and designed to address the realities of HBCC work.