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 Education of Young Children and those that were not accredited were selected randomly from existing data bases. Results indicate that (a) relatively few programs use continuity of caregivers for infants and even fewer use it for toddlers; (b) the majority of programs consider children’s attainment of developmental milestones, their age, and the space available in the next class when deciding when to transition infants and toddlers to new classes; (c) most centers used a number of practices to prepare infants and toddlers to move to new classes; and (d) more respondents report agreement with using continuity of caregivers than practice it. Relatively few differences were noted across accredited and nonaccredited centers on these issues.