A Progress Report on the Child Care Project

If you were able to attend our conference on "Child Care in Chicago: A Working Woman's Issue" last January, you know that WWHP has launched a project to collect first-hand stories of women involved in child care--the providers, the parents, and some observers of the field. Our goal is to use these stories to engender public discussions of the availability, affordability, and quality of child care that exists for working class families in Chicago today.

Since our January 11th conference, we have assembled a focus group of 10 child care practitioners--women who work directly with children in their own homes or in centers, Head Start or private, and videotaped them talking about the issue from their perspective. We have also videotaped an interview with Katie Jordan, the president of the Chicago Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) who was a witness to the one of the nation's premier child care centers provided by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers for 13 years and who participated in National CLUW's effort to influence the federal government to create legislation that would support child care. These videotapes are either fully transcribed on in the process of being transcribed.

Individual interviews with child care practitioners are planned soon to deepen our understanding of the issues raised by the focus group. The next step in obtaining information will be gathering parents of young children together for a focus group and interviews on their experiences.

We have already had inquiries from people in child care who are interested in the material we've collected. At the same time, we are talking to playwrights who have ideas on how to present this material to the public. In addition, we plan to explore other mediums to move "Child Care in Chicago" into the public view: radio interviews, film, articles in print.