YoungStar Analysis and Update Project

YoungStar Analysis and Update beginning in 2024

The Department of Children and Families (DCF) is conducting an analysis and update of the YoungStar Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS).

Our goal is to strengthen YoungStar and make it a more effective tool for:

Setting expectations for child care quality
Communicating information about child care quality to parents/caregivers so they can make informed child care decisions
Supporting child care programs to meet quality expectations

To achieve this goal, DCF is committed to engaging with a diverse group of early childhood educators, families, tribes, and other stakeholders for their input and feedback. This update will be a multi-year process and we will provide more information as this work progresses.

How Can You Get Involved?

We want to hear from you! We will be launching a series of listening sessions across the state to talk to families, caregivers, providers, educators, tribes, and other child care stakeholders. Join us at an upcoming listening session and share your thoughts about quality child care and how we can make YoungStar work for you.

Upcoming Listening Sessions: There are no listening sessions scheduled at this time. Check back for updates, or sign up for our email list to be notified about future listening sessions.

The YoungStar Analysis and Update Survey is now closed. Thank you for participating in our survey.

August 2024 YoungStar Analysis and Updates - Issue 1

Welcome to the YoungStar Analysis and Update listserv!

The Department of Children and Families (DCF) is looking for ways to improve the YoungStar child care quality rating and improvement system, and to start by listening to and learning from the providers, families, and partners most impacted by YoungStar.

In this first issue of the YoungStar Analysis and Update listserv, we’re excited to share updates on who we’ve heard from, what we’ve heard, and what’s next in this project.

Who we’ve heard from

So far, we’ve conducted 36 engagement events, ranging from sessions at the annual conferences of partner organizations to DCF-led listening sessions that took place both in-person and virtually, in English and in Spanish.

During these engagements we heard from:

Over 440 child care providers/early educators/partners who work directly with providers
Over 40 parents/caregivers
15 state legislators/legislative staff members

For individuals who did not want to or were not able to attend an engagement session, we also opened a survey. So far, our survey results include responses from over:

400 parents/caregivers
280 providers/early educators
55 community members

What we’ve heard

With so many people engaging, we heard a whole lot about child care quality broadly and YoungStar specifically, and our team is hard at work analyzing the results. Once we’ve completed this analysis, we’ll share the full findings in a subsequent listserv. But for now, here’s a preview of some of the early themes that are coming through loud and clear:

Families are struggling to find and afford any child care. While quality care remains important, this struggle means that for many families, YoungStar is not a key factor in their child care decision making.
Providers are struggling to recruit and retain staff. This makes it difficult for providers to meet the staff education requirements needed for higher YoungStar ratings. There is interest in recognizing staff experience and/or prior learning that is relevant but does not lead to a college degree in the YoungStar system.
Families and providers want better alignment between child care regulation (i.e. licensing and certification) and YoungStar. For example, can monitoring results impact YoungStar ratings? Can we ensure that licensing specialists and YoungStar coaches/raters offer consistent guidance?
Not all providers know what services are available to them through YoungStar Connect or how to access them. And some providers are frustrated by long wait times for YoungStar Connect services.
Providers appreciate the current supports to achieve and maintain quality, such as financial support through Child Care Counts, and want more of them, especially for lower-rated programs that are working to increase their ratings.

What’s next

Our team is hard at work analyzing all the feedback we’ve received to ensure that the perspective of every person who’s shared their time and experience with us is included in our analysis. We are also conducting research, including how other states’ quality rating and improvement systems are evolving, as well as parent/caregiver utilization of YoungStar.

Once that analysis is complete in the fall of 2024, we will launch a second round of engagement sessions organized around the common themes from the analysis. The goal of these sessions will be to identify options for how to improve YoungStar and work through the tradeoffs of these options. As an example based on what we’ve heard so far, we will have a session to discuss options for how to incorporate staff experience into the YoungStar system and the pros and cons of those options.

We will communicate about these upcoming issue-specific sessions in this YoungStar listserv and in our weekly provider listserv.

The ultimate goal is to have recommendations for ways to improve YoungStar to bring to DCF Secretary Amundson and our partners in the Legislature.

Thank you for your interest in and contribution to this important project. And if someone in your network would appreciate getting these listserv messages, they can sign up on our website: Sign Up to Receive YoungStar Analysis and Update Project Emails.

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Learn More

Please check back to this webpage for updated information regarding this project and how you can be involved.

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