The National Center for Healthy Housing/Enterprise Community Partners Home-Based Child Care Lead Safety Program

The Home-Based Child Care Lead Safety Program seeks to create a healthy and safe environment for children

A safe and healthy child care environment provides the foundation for early learning. Lead poisoning prevention and children's health issues have many components, and require multiple levels of participation.  An estimated 24 million homes in the United States have lead-based paint hazards, which can have a debilitating effect on a child's development. Many of the homes also need other safety-related repairs to the electrical system, stairs, railings, and porches.  Home-based child care providers in low-income neighborhoods often live in older housing at risk for these conditions and rarely earn sufficient income to cover the costs of the improvements. Other obstacles include logistical difficulties in doing lead hazard control activity within an operating child care business, and insufficient financial and programmatic resources to address the combined difficulties of controlling lead and safety hazards in home-based child care homes. 

The Program

From 2003 to 2005, the Rochester and Syracuse, NY Home-Based Child Care Lead Safety Program created 25 healthy and safe child care homes that minimized the risks of unintentional injury and lead poisoning, while improving energy efficiency and indoor air quality. The pilot, funded through a $930,789 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Operation Lead Elimination Action Program and over $346,000 in leveraged public and private funds, was intended to investigate the obstacles to serving this client base and provide a model and document templates to facilitate replication in other communities.

Project accomplishments included:

• Improvements to the quality of home-based child care, and thus to the health and well-being of more than 100 children, through the control of lead and safety hazards in 25 family child care homes.
• Education for more than 75 providers and parents on the causes and effects of lead poisoning and daily maintenance techniques that can reduce lead and other environmental hazards.
• A relocation strategy that preserved the provider's business during construction through creation of lead-safe relocation houses approved to serve as child care facilities.
• Improved coordination between home-based child care providers and community-based housing organizations with home repair assistance programs.
• Leverages of private funds to impose the lowest cost burden on those who can least afford repairs
• An Implementation Guide that contains model documents and practices that integrate lead hazard control, reduction of other environmental hazards, compliance with housing code and child care regulations and energy efficiency, to promote national replication.
• Commitments to replicate the project concept in Philadelphia, PA in 2005-2008.

This project was a joint endeavor of the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH), Enterprise Community Partners (formerly The Enterprise Foundation), and four community-based organizations selected to conduct outreach, education and repairs. The Rochester Children's Nursery/Family Child Care Satellite Network of Greater Rochester (FCCSN) and Child Care Solutions (CCS) of Syracuse, NY recruited home-based child care providers into the project. Home HeadQuarters, Inc. (HHQ) and NeighborWorks of Rochester, Inc. (NWR) coordinated lead hazard reduction and safety rehabilitation activities.

Training for Family Childcare Providers

A Guide to Implementing a Home-Based Child Care Lead Safety Program

A Guide to Implementing a Home-Based Child Care Lead Study Program

Click on the picture to download the entire 180-page document containing all six chapters [pdf file size 7 mg), or you may click on the links below to download one chaper at a time.

Chapter 1 – Introduction

Chapter 2 – Finding the Right Partners, Program Design, and Administration

Chapter 3 – Defining the Target Population for Service

Chapter 4 – Defining and Managing Rehabilitation Services

Chapter 5 – Developing a Program Relocation Strategy

Chapter 6 – Outreach to Providers and Parents (file size 6,270KB)

Important Information for Childcare Providers

What Family Child Care Providers Can Do About Lead provides useful information on the risks of lead exposure in home-based child care centers. It contains a checklist that providers can use to assess lead hazards in their operations. It also provides many useful references on environmental health and safety. Additional information for child care providers can be found on the Enterprise Community Partners Child Care Library On-Line at http://www.enterprisefoundation.org/resources/CCL/index.asp

What Family Child Care Providers Can Do About Lead [pdf]

Syracuse

Syracuse Post Standard Story
Lead is Gone at Childcare
Click here to view "Work in Progress" in Syracuse in Acrobat (pdf), file size 3,362kb

To celebrate the completion of the first Syracuse provider home, The National Center for Healthy Housing and The Enterprise Association sponsored an open house at the Syracuse relocation site. Featured speakers included U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Deputy Secretary Roy Bernardi, Congressman James Walsh, Syracuse Mayor Matthew Driscoll, and representatives of all LEAP Syracuse partner organizations.  JPMorganChase representative Nancy Wiggins presented a check for $50,000 to the project. Guests at the event included child care providers served by the program and representatives of city, state, and federal offices concerned with children's health, child care services, environment, and affordable housing. Click here to see pictures of the Leap Syracuse Event held in May 2004.

Rochester

Unique Anti-Lead Plan Starts
Click here to view "Work in Progress" in Rochester [pdf]

The Home-Based Child Care Lead Safety Program:
"For a healthy, safe home away from home"

 For additional information, contact
 Carol Kawecki at 443.539.4158
 or ckawecki@centerforhealthyhousing.org
Patricia Magnuson, 212-262-9575 x114
 or pmagnuson@enterprisecommunity.org