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■ <br />Recommendation : Ensure that quality child care is available to all <br />children. <br />Action Strategies: <br />A. Ensure provision of child care for county families in high quality, safe facilities with <br />educated child care providers supervising all young children; <br />B. Involve parents in the total process through classes and hands -on; <br />C. Create additional affordable (sliding - scale) after - school and summer programs, <br />available to all children, including those with disabilities, using highly trained, well -paid staff <br />with trained high school students as assistants; <br />D. Develop strategies to ensure that early childhood specialists (teachers) are compensated <br />fairly, including benefits; <br />E. Encourage businesses to adopt parental leave policies to make it possible for parents to <br />care for their children at home in their first years: <br />■ Encourage county and town governments to establish model policies for family <br />friendly work environments; <br />• Resolve the dilemma of reconciling parental leave policies to allow parents to care for <br />young children at home with the federal Work First program, which is encouraging <br />parents to work rather than care for young children at home. Look for creative <br />funding sources to equalize discrepancies between "back to work" and parental leave. <br />■ Search for economic ways to encourage small businesses to adopt parental leave <br />policies. Perhaps, create a consortium of small businesses to make such approaches <br />economical; and <br />• Establish a public awareness campaign promoting family leave policies. <br />Recommendation 2: <br />Action Strategies: <br />Address child care affordability. <br />A. Work with our legislative delegation to encourage public funding for child care, similar to <br />K -12 levels; and in the mean time create a plan with identified money sources to ensure that all <br />families are able to access affordable child care; <br />B. Share costs with private sector through on -site day care. <br />71 <br />