Communal Needs Assessment
Garfield Park is an urban park located 184-acre in Chicago’s West Side’s East Garfield Park neighborhood. The neighborhood known as Garfield Park comprises two Chicago neighborhoods: East and West Garfield Park (East Garfield Park, 2022). It is the first among the three significant unique Chicago gardens in the West (Garfield, Humboldt, and Douglass Parks), and William LeBaron intended it to be a pleasure ground. Among the significant United States plant conservatories, the Garfield Common Conservatoire is located in Garfield (East Garfield Park, 2022). It is the Chicago estate and boulevard organization that is the furthest west. Its history includes the transformation from farmland to the municipality’s second-busiest spending district. Garfield’s enticements include a dishonorable 19th-century track and part of Chicago’s most incredible beautiful parks; eras of booming housing growth trailed by white aeronautical; racial discontent, and nationals banding together.
State regulations, labor, and operating costs have contributed to the high childcare costs problem in Garfield community in Chicago. Most Americans have had static hourly earnings in recent decades. In other words, only a tiny portion of general economic development reaches average households. No single policy will ensure that average Americans portion in the nation’s wealth; instead, a combination of measures will be required by nations. Some should offer workers more bargaining power in the employment market, while others should enhance earnings by expanding social insurance and public spending. Helping American kin survive with the tall price of infant care is an obvious example of the latter.
Gathering Community Information (Methodology)
Primary and secondary sources play significant roles in collecting data concerning the extensive childcare prices in Garfield Park in Chicago. History tends to repeat itself, and primary materials can help the researcher gain more information concerning the high childcare costs in Chicago and their impacts on the Garfield community residents. Educators can use original materials to offer courses context and inspire students to think critically about important historical and current events. Newspapers, brochures, forensic reports, and court transcripts are examples of primary source resources that can assist students in developing their understanding and discovering new viewpoints. Primary sources provide access to a wide range of historically marginalized viewpoints. Primary sources are valuable for delving deeper into history and society, allowing scholars to investigate the diversity of human experience outside of the mainstream.
Investigating primary sources allows learners to confront the past’s complexity by grappling with conflicts and comparing diverse sources representing different viewpoints. Students must consume media through a similarly critical lens to navigate today’s information-heavy landscape. The skills required to examine primary source texts effectively are transferable to the consumption and study of contemporary media. Studying primary sources aids pupils in their development as citizens. Students must become knowledgeable citizens to be active agents of positive change. Such sources offer fresh insights in correcting accurate data. Secondary sources will offer the researcher an excellent overview of childcare prices in Chicago, particularly in the Garfield community. Secondary sources are precious when scholars look for information about an unfamiliar topic. They are helpful since the writer may use them to identify keywords to characterize childcare prices and references for further study.
Other communities that have experienced high childcare costs include the Washington D.C. communities. These societies include Downtown, Brookland, Capitol Hill, and Adams Morgan (Childcare Costs by State, 2022). Washington has the most excellent classy child upkeep of any public at $24,243 yearly or $2,020 monthly (Childcare Costs by State, 2022). The price of infant teenager care monthly in the Region is around what a one-bedroom room costs. Massachusetts contains the second-most expensive childcare, estimated at $20,913 annually (Childcare Costs by State, 2022). Therefore, Amherst, Agawam, Barnstable, Bridgewater, Braintree, Franklin, Palmer, North Attleborough, Randolph, Watertown, Southbridge, Weymouth, West Springfield, and Winthrop have incurred high childcare prices in Massachusetts.
Review of the Literature
Some countries provide free public pre-school as a child-care technique where children can develop communal solid, pre-academic, and overall life knowledge to prosper in college and yonder. Pre-school alumni develop better academic willingness, reduced custody rates, and developed wages. Playing is an outstanding way for children to absorb. If a youngster’s initial involvement with classroom education is in overly academic settings, they may not possess strong curiosity sense and become detached from school. Kindergarten permits children to study in procedures that appeal them, nurturing a positive association with erudition. The greatest pre-schools inspire youngsters to create a wish to learn that will stay throughout their school careers. Only the poorest working families are eligible for subsidies for children under three, whether over Early Head Jolt or the youngster upkeep block grant, and fewer than one out of every six qualified children receives assistance.
The child and dependent care tax credit is the sole direct government support for early care and education for most families. In Europe, new parents often take a 14-month paid leave, and children typically begin public school at three. (Toddlers are not sitting at desks doing worksheets during the pre-school years; instead, they play.) According to Hans Bos, senior vice president of the American Institutes, parents are likely to pay extra for child maintenance for children aged one and two. There are similar stiffnesses in the U.S. about whether children should be at home with their parents. However, governments cover many care costs, including subsidies to stay-at-home guardians in South Korea, Finland, and Denmark.
Child care programs in the Nordic nations are the utmost liberal, with free upkeep for low-income kin. In Denmark, parents of toddlers receive a quarterly child benefit, and significantly subsidized children care up to ten years, which is essentially government-run but includes private centers and home-based maintenance. Children in Germany can attend “Kita” classes from a few months to the end of elementary school. Parents reimburse tuition grounded on their revenue in certain areas, but it is unrestricted in others, such as Hamburg and Berlin (“The True Cost of High-Quality Child Care Across the United States”, 2022). Before their children start public pre-school at two or three, parents can acquire tax recognitions to 85% of costs incurred in attending crèches or employing home-based “childminders” in France. Parents in several other nations pay a far higher share of their earnings but still obtain more administration aid than the U.S. Japan has subsidized child care, but the parent’s share of the tuition is high, and seats are scarce.
Free pre-school is available in England and Ireland, although only for a few hours every day. Governments occasionally contribute to the cost of child care to achieve specific policy objectives (“Chicago’s Key Resilience Challenges”, 2022). Since there are no good policies that protect childcare systems, the challenge is prevalent in Chicago as families struggle to obtain affordable and quality childcare services as they leave for work. The social milestones and trends relating to the extensive childcare challenge in Garfield include racial disparities. Chances are not equally reachable, and economic adversity is experienced unduly by Chicago’s Latino and black residents (“Chicago’s Key Resilience Challenges”, 2022). Political trends include poor relations between blacks and whites, while historical challenges include violence and poverty. Various interventions, including the intervening of the federal and government policies, were made by various communities to eliminate the challenges (“The Economics of Child Care”, 2022). However, the interventions were not successful since the USA, in general, is still facing the issue.
Needs Analysis
Child care has been a financial hardship for most parents, with costs in many areas rivaling college and causing families to make decisions. This high cost, on the other hand, frequently compensates for the authentic cost that care workers incur, and very seldom, if ever, encompasses the “true” cost of healthcare is, the rate of providing high-quality, developmental level-appropriate, secure, and dependable child care manned by a professional way remunerated worker (“The True Cost of High-Quality Child Care Across the United States”, 2022). A dynamic cost estimator tool is one of the resources available in childcare. Other resources include a conducive environment, pacifier, diapers, baby blankets, wipes, bibs, and excess clothing. The governments may use the cost estimator tool to show the finances of childcare costs, calculate the actual childcare costs in each Region, and genuinely comprehend why quality daycare is out of grasp for several families.
Existing interventions towards the problem include government intervention by offering free subsidies and pre-primary education to parents to reduce the costs they incur in childcare. The cost approximating tool is helping the populations in calculating the costs they incur in daycare per month to avoid miscalculations. Federal and government policies reduce daycare costs for working parents and ensure children receive quality care (“The True Cost of High-Quality Child Care Across the United States”, 2022). However, these interventions are ineffective since public subsidy to care general admittance is inadequate. Lack of quality care, a clean environment, and poverty are the existing challenges in society that prevent addressing the challenge. This childcare cost problem is the one that the community needs to address since providing all families with affordable, high-quality child care will improve the economy, end discrimination, raise women’s labor force involvement, and improve children’s well-being. Employed families represent the population of individuals impacted by the wide-ranging childcare prices.
Anthropological Services Project Proposal
Statement of Necessity
Garfield Park is a 184-acre in Chicago and is undergoing high childcare expenses due to state laws, labor, and operating expenditures. Primary and secondary sources are essential in gathering information about the vast daycare prices in Chicago’s Garfield Park. History tends to repeat itself, and primary materials can aid the researcher in learning more about Chicago’s high childcare expenses and their effects on the inhabitants of the Garfield neighborhood. Other communities that have had to deal with high daycare costs include those in Washington, D.C. Downtown, Brookland, Capitol Hill, and Adams Morgan are among these societies. Washington has the most expensive kid upkeep; the monthly expense of baby and adolescent care is about the same as a one-bedroom room.
Massachusetts has the second most costly childcare; cities of Amherst, Agawam, Barnstable, Bridgewater, Braintree, Franklin, Palmer, North Attleborough, Randolph, Watertown, Southbridge, Weymouth, West Springfield, and Winthrop in Massachusetts have high daycare costs. Some countries provide free public pre-schools where children can get shared, pre-academic, and overall life aids that will support them prosper in college and beyond. In Europe, new parents often take a 14-month paid maternity leave, and children usually start public school at three. Child care programs in the Nordic countries are the most liberal, with low-income relatives receiving free care. From a few months till the end of primary school, children in Germany can attend “Kita” classes. In some regions, such as Hamburg and Berlin, parents reimburse tuition based on their income, but it is unrestricted in others.
Racial disparities are among the social milestones and trends related to Garfield’s wide childcare dilemma. Chances are not equal, and Chicago’s Latino and black residents face disproportionate economic hardship (“Chicago’s Key Resilience Challenges”, 2022). Political developments include racial tensions between blacks and whites and crime and poverty, which have been historical issues for the city. Diverse initiatives, including federal and government policy action, were made by various communities to address the difficulties (“The Economics of Child Care”, 2022). However, the efforts were ineffective, and the problem persists across the United States. For most parents, child care has long been a financial burden, with expenses in many locations rivaling those of college and forcing families to make difficult choices. Government intervention in free subsidies and pre-primary education to parents to reduce childcare expenses are examples of existing interventions.
Interventions such as federal and state legislation help working parents save money on childcare while ensuring that their children receive quality care. These initiatives, however, are ineffective because public funding for general admission to care is insufficient (“The True Cost of High-Quality Child Care Across the United States”, 2022). Existing societal difficulties such as a lack of quality treatment, a clean environment, and poverty hinder the problem from being addressed. The community must address the issue of childcare costs because providing all families with cheap, high-quality child care will boost the economy, eliminate discrimination, increase females’ labor force contribution, and advance children’s happiness. The demographics of those affected by the problem are working families. Language barriers, unfamiliarity with palliative care/hospice settings, skepticism of universal healthcare support, previous anecdotes, religious differences, beliefs in alternative treatments, and uncertainty are all cultural aspects that childcare workers should take for children.
Program Proposal Description
Garfield community in Chicago should implement the child care subsidies evidence-based program as a solution for the extensive childcare costs. The child care funding program will provide financial help to employed parents or those attending college to refuge the prices of specialized center-based or in-home child care. Infant care grants are frequently accessible by low-income families; suitability criteria diverge by state. Child care subsidies can make a difference in the community by supporting low-income adults in safeguarding their youngsters’ healthy progress while supporting their families. Increased access to subsidies could provide children and their families with various long-term benefits. Augmented family revenue and reduced deficiency can benefit children’s achievement and success in the short and long run (Giannarelli et al., 2019). Families might pick higher-quality child care with a subsidy, which would help their children’s growth.
More consistent child care subsidies can aid families to spend less time from the workforce and improve their financial well-being and salaries path in the long run. More consistent children care can benefit families to spend less time from workforce and enhance their financial comfort and earnings path in the long run (“What If We Expanded Child Care Subsidies?”, 2022). Increased access to subsidies could provide children and their families with various long-term benefits. Families might pick higher-quality child care with a subsidy, which would help their children’s growth. Increased family revenue and reduced scarcity can benefit children’s achievement and success in the short and long run.
Goals and Objectives
The childcare subsidies program aims at helping parents with childcare costs and facilitating persons to contribute or upsurge their partaking in the labor force. It will enable children’s presence in child upkeep to provide their early knowledge and growth. The childcare subsidy will attain these goals by making childcare reasonable for various families and providing more aid to truncated and middle-income parents. This project will increase free time and earnings for mothers and their salaries and free time. Joining daycare may upsurge children’s future pay, life anticipation, and school admission for older relatives.
Method/Intervention
Various activities must attain the goals of the childcare subsidies project. Among the activities include daycare subsidies for moderate families, childcare education programming and primary care, the hiring of high-quality, skilled caregivers, and the funding of daycares in underprivileged areas are all examples of activities that will be available. Greenspace, play equipment, public recreational spaces, walking routes, community gardens, walkways, and sports facilities are all infrastructure examples that encourage physical exercise and psychological health. The events will be nutritious lunches and snacks and learning opportunities that promote school preparation. These activities will ensure children obtain quality learning, nutritious food, increased jobs, availability of affordable childcare, and playground equipment.
Employment/Management/Resource Requirements
The possessions necessary to device the program include staffing and overall budget desires, location, source of funds, and a plan. Staffing will ensure the project is accomplished and operating costs reduced. Funds will ensure the amount of capital required to execute the project is available. Project planning delivers structure and anticipation for the implementation stage, eradicating wasteful actions and patterns. Budgeting will ensure the project manager saves time and money and ensures the project lies within budget. Ten staff members will be required at the program’s start, and the management will supplement them as the childcare program progresses. The employees’ qualifications will be required to have include at least a high school diploma relating to childcare. Their general duties will entail organizing a reliable everyday routine, including adequate meals, naps, playtimes, and instructive activities. Backing children’s growth, such as offering activities that progress their comprehension of the globe and aid them to learn novel skills.
Program Evaluation Plan
The data collection process includes analyzing the problem, selecting opportunities, planning, collecting data, interpreting it, and analyzing the outputs. The organization will know the project is successful if it meets its objectives, is delivered within the allocated time, within the budget, and delivers the expected value. The firm will consider the scope, client satisfaction, quality, schedule, and budget to evaluate the project’s success. Cost, technical specifications, time, quality requirements, business objectives, and client satisfaction are the scholar’s measures to evaluate the project’s success. The project manager will be responsible for measuring the project and collecting quantitative and qualitative data.
Guidelines for Program Implementation and Stakeholder Communication Tool
The project’s first step will be identifying the stakeholders in the implementation plan. The following steps include prioritizing the goals, defining variables, creating the schedule, identifying challenges, and presenting the project to the stakeholders. The project will officially start on 2/4/2022 and accomplish on 12/5/2022. The key stakeholder, the researcher, would connect with first is the project sponsor using email as the announcement tool. An email will be the most effective tool since it disseminates data and offers a quick response. Working parents with children who need care are the target audience. The statement plan relies on the childcare subsidies program that ensures affordable childcare costs. Conversation goals include cooperating with stakeholders about the project schedule and making suggestions about the project.
Professional Reflection
This project has helped me learn more about the residents of West Garfield. They need to better their area have clashed back against relocation, violence, and deficiency that afflicts the Region in the 1950s for decades. They formed block weapons and nonprofit establishments like Bethel Novel Life, which has emphasized land growth, reasonable housing, social agendas, and job formation for nearly four decades, relying on “the community’s people, physical possessions, and faith foundation” to reinforce its ties to other sections and provide prospects for residents. This project has taught me that West Garfield Park is home to various people incurring expensive childcare costs. Child care that is both high-quality and cheap is critical to a child’s development since it allows them to learn outside the classroom. It is also valuable for parents because it allows them to stay in the workforce while promoting their children’s healthy growth. Many working families, however, do not have access to high-quality childcare.
Raising a child in Chicago, IL, can feel like a never-ending series of financial difficulties. Adequate childcare is expensive, out of sync with the parents’ schedule, or challenging to locate for many families. The Obstacles that Parents Face in Finding Quality and Affordable Child Care are a challenge to work, specifically for mothers taking unpaid caregiving tasks. The Center for American Progress (CAP) conducted a short poll in 2019 to learn how parents make child care work for their families, particularly over the summer (“The Financial Challenges of Childcare”, 2022). A total of 1,000 parents took part in the poll, which revealed that inexpensive childcare is difficult to come by, resulting in work security concerns (“The Financial Challenges of Childcare”, 2022). In addition, most of the parents who took part in the study had to make sacrifices at work and home to maintain a work-life balance due to the lack of child care services and their high costs.
Child care expense is a significant obstacle in selecting the best summer child care center for their children. When it comes to finding excellent child care, another hurdle that many families experience is availability. When parents require child care, programs are frequently provided outside of the hours, uncommon during the summer. Even if parents can locate open programs, distance from job and home issues render them unavailable. Several parents mentioned other specific factors, including finding exemplary child care service for their disabled children. Other parents said it’s tough to find reliable, safe, and trustworthy arrangements for their children during the summer because babysitters, family members, and others they can “trust” are frequently unavailable. Child care is predominantly out of grasp for low-wage workers.
Despite the economic importance of child upkeep, governmental subsidy for general admittance is severely insufficient. The central Child Maintenance and Growth Fund (CCDF), recognized by the teenager Care Progress Block Grant implementation, or CCDBG, represents the principal communal financing foundation for child attention. This federal-state corporation program, which desires matching reserves from the statuses, offers money to help entitled families obtain child care over subsidy coupons remunerated to the benefactor for a qualified young one. However, this program barely reaches 1 in every seven eligible children due to a lack of financing. Many families in need of child care assistance do not satisfy the eligibility requirements.
The subsidy value the amount that breadwinners can get for each registered subsidy-eligible child is typically inadequate to cater for the entire price of functioning a quality child care facility. A child care benefactor who can regain care costs through parent instruction has no enticement to source child care niches to eligible families, harshly limiting options for families relying on this support to obtain child care. Although federal standards mandate that states set expense rates at levels that allow a majority of child care providers to participate, only one state, Maine, has done so as of 2020 and even at that point, charges are still grounded on a dysfunctional market that fails to justify for actual care costs. The regulation places the weight of child maintenance costs primarily on people who cannot afford the actual care costs in most areas. Families are remarkably priced sensitive, as child care generally accounts for most of their regular budget, obliging them to put price ahead of a range of other considerations.
There exists a high call for children care in numerous areas. Despite this, stock does not encounter demand since families are paying what they can get, yet this rarely caters the total price of conveyingg the facility, which is particularly true for baby and toddler. The gap among the actual costs and what various families can pay for is much bigger, causing scarcity of child support. The traditional stock and petition shop can only operate in high-income sectors, where parents are more likely to devote a good part of their pay on child attention. Child care earners can have enough money to capitalize on excellence when they own sufficient money. This project involves various processes: identifying the stakeholders, prioritizing the goals, defining variables, creating the schedule, identifying challenges, and presenting the project to the stakeholders.
The outcomes of this scheme include better learning programs, increased quality, and affordable childcare. My coursework culminated in the capstone development by increasing my stakes and focusing on accomplishing the mission. While completing the venture, my strengths include accountability, being an effective communicator, strategic planner, and critical thinker. I encountered various problems such as great expectations, poor stakeholder engagement, and scope challenges. In my future professional life, what I have learned will help me to become a successful project manager since it has enabled me to acknowledge the failures measures that ensure the success of a plan and the communication strategy and its significance in managing a project.
This project will be helpful in the job market and further studies in various ways. First, it will enable people to know the several habits high childcare costs impact their well-being. Second, it will ensure that working women have a better option for their children. In this project, I intended to establish a program that could significantly eliminate the extensive childcare costs in the Garfield community in Chicago. Hence, I recognized the childcare subsidies program as the right program to benefit Garfield community members. Establishing the right program went well. I found it complex to establish the right stakeholders for the project. To better my experience, I would like to conduct a shareholder analysis or valuation of a scheme’s key members and how the project will solve their difficulties and needs.
Reflecting on my time at SNHU, I started as a scholar who lacked more information about starting and executing a project. I have become a successful project manager with sufficient skills that guarantee a successful closure. I will be a top-notch project manager with broad project management knowledge and skills. The program aligns with the code of ethics for human services professionals. The program guarantees respect for all persons’ self-esteem and well-being, promotes autonomy; supports social fairness; and integrity, uprightness, authenticity, and objectives. However, during my education and the completion of the project, I incurred various ethical challenges, such as honoring social diversity. As a human service professional, these dilemmas will aid me in learning various cultural considerations and how they impact childcare systems. They will assist me in learning how I should approach people from various cultural backgrounds.
References
Chicago’s key resilience challenges. Resilient.chicago.gov. (2022). Web.
Child care costs by state 2022. Worldpopulationreview.com. Web.
East Garfield Park. Neighborhoods.com. (2022). Web.
The economics of child care. Clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov. (2022). Web.
The financial challenges of childcare. justforkidsllc.com. (2022). Web.
Giannarelli, L., Adams, G., Minton, S., & Dwyer, K. (2019). What if we expanded child care subsidies? A National and State Perspective. Web.
The true cost of high-quality child care across the united states. americanprogress.org. (2022). Web.
What if we expanded child care subsidies? urban.org (2022). Web.
Appendix A: Logic Model Chart
Appendix B: Implementation Plan Chart
Chart 2: Implementation plan