Continuity of caregiver for infants and toddlers in center-based child care: Report on a survey of center practices

The purposes of this mail survey were to describe the extent to which child care programs use continuity of caregivers with infants and toddlers, the factors influencing decisions to move infants and toddlers to new classes, the practices used to prepare them for such moves, and the extent to which respondents agreed with the concept of providing continuity of caregivers. Child care programs accredited by the National Association for the Educatio n of Young Children and those that were not accredited were selected random ly from existing data bases. Results indicate that (a) relatively few progr ams use continuity of caregivers for infants and even fewer use it for todd lers; (b) the majority of programs consider children's attainment of develo pmental milestones, their age, and the space available in the next class wh en deciding when to transition infants and toddlers to new classes; (c) mos t centers used a number of practices to prepare infants and toddlers to mov e to new classes; and (d) more respondents report agreement with using cont inuity of caregivers than practice it. Relatively few differences were note d across accredited and nonaccredited centers on these issues.