RAPID Survey Project

We’re Moving to a New Account—Come Follow Us! ?? Hi friends, We have some exciting news! The RAPID Survey Project is joining social media forces with our home base at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. Our hope is this change makes it easier for you to find all the latest research and insights to continue supporting families and caregivers of young children. What does this mean for you? Starting in January 2025, we’ll no longer be posting on this account. All our social media updates will be shared exclusively through the Stanford Center on Early Childhood: LinkedIn - Stanford Center on Early Childhood Threads - https://lnkd.in/gc9WxvJQ Instagram - https://lnkd.in/g596ZgUw Facebook - https://lnkd.in/gEhRCpmy ?? Here’s what you need to do: To keep getting the latest from RAPID, simply follow us on these accounts (if you’re not already). Thank you for being part of the RAPID community—we can't wait to keep connecting with you in this new space! See you there, RAPID team

Are caregivers and young children spending less time outside due to extreme weather? Read to find out and other smart questions posed by RAPID Survey Project:

RAPID Survey Project's fact sheet shares what they’ve learned specifically about the experiences and well-being of California families with infants and toddlers. The data shows that 35% report difficulty affording at least one area of basic need.

To understand family economic well-being, we asked California parents with young children about experiences of material hardship. In our September 2024 analysis, 35% of California families with infants and toddlers report difficulty affording at least one area of basic need. More than two in three (68%) California parents of infants and toddlers report feeling moderate-to-extreme stress about paying for basic needs. This high rate of hardship is concerning, as parents’ economic stress can interfere with the ability to provide responsive caregiving during a critical period of bonding and child and family development. Read the fact sheet: https://lnkd.in/gS6FXSsT

RAPID partners with cities, counties, and states across the U.S. to listen to parents and caregivers with children under age 6. Their voices and experiences provide snapshots of what life is like for those raising young children in communities across the country and help to spot national trends. In 2024, we partnered with The Connecticut Project and community-based organizations in the state to hear directly from Connecticut families of all races, ethnicities, and income levels. The data show that one in four Connecticut families say child care is unaffordable. This fact sheet represents survey data from parents of children under age 6 across all eight Connecticut counties, who told us about their experiences with child care access and affordability: https://lnkd.in/eSAxRWW6

Born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, The RAPID Survey Project has developed into a platform that gathers actionable data on a wide range of topics to advance science and inform data-driven, evidence-based decisions about early childhood policy, practice, and systems. As we approach the five year anniversary of RAPID, we describe in this working paper the overarching architecture and methodology, key design principles, and conceptual model underlying RAPID; review the main published findings from national RAPID household and provider surveys from 2020?2024; and highlight ways in which RAPID is currently being used in systems reform efforts in the aftermath of the pandemic. https://lnkd.in/ghzYgz_6

Extreme weather events are becoming more commonplace, raising concerns among parents of young children and child care providers. Facing these issues is the first step to addressing them, writes RAPID senior advisor Joan Lombardi, PhD, in this new guest commentary. https://lnkd.in/gD4xtwGi

What kind of child care—and childhood—do America's children deserve? For the past year, I've been watching and tracking states as they roll back (or propose getting rid of) regulations meant to keep children safe and thriving in child care programs: bringing in teenagers as young as 14 to work as teachers, lowering training requirements, raising group sizes and giving each teacher more children to watch on their own. Sure, this could open up child care spots. But what is often lost in this is an awareness of the consequences for children and their teachers. Early educators are extremely underpaid in an incredibly difficult and high-stakes profession. And children are at their most pivotal time of brain development, where having meaningful, thoughtful interactions with a caregiver can literally change brain development (and the absence of it can change it for the worse). My latest, published in partnership with The Nation, explores all of this. Huge thank you to my mentor who helped shape this story, LynNell Hancock, my thoughtful editor, Sarah Carr, and the Spencer Fellowship at Columbia Journalism School for support on this story. https://lnkd.in/gv_7FCns

Children are sensitive to the health impacts of extreme weather, and many caregivers of young children report experiencing extreme weather events. RAPID asks parents and child care providers about extreme weather to better understand the environments in which young children are developing and the experiences of the important adults in their lives. Throughout 2022, RAPID listened to families with young children to better understand their experiences with extreme weather, and found that 78% of parents report being worried about extreme weather. These data highlight the impact of extreme weather events on caregivers and young children and how the environments in which families live are impacting children. This fact sheet builds on these findings using August 2024 RAPID national survey data from parents of children under age 6 and child care providers. We asked caregivers about their experiences with extreme weather events and the impacts of these events on their own health and the health of the children in their care. https://lnkd.in/ge9mBWu8

When I first heard about states deregulating child care, I wondered how child care teachers and programs were doing-- before and at the time when lawmakers decided to increase group sizes and ratios and put teen workers into these classrooms. After all, exclusive data provided to us by RAPID Survey Project found nearly 45 percent of child care providers said the quality of the care they offer has been affected by pandemic--related stressors. Are lawmakers making these decisions with full knowledge of what conditions are like and how hard it is to work in child care? (A Kansas lawmaker who cowrote a deregulation bill told me no, she was unaware of quality and safety concerns). My colleague Sara Hutchinson and I looked through hundreds of pages of inspection reports in states that are deregulating to find out. It wasn't hard to find disturbing conditions for kids. Programs were staffed with teachers who were getting so frustrated, they were yelling at children — including swearing at them, calling them “pussies” and telling them to “shut up” — and abusing children or in some cases, ignoring them. Teachers withheld food as punishment. There were examples of abuse and hazardous items being left within reach of young children, including cleaning supplies, medication, a gun safe with ammunition inside and the key in the lock, alcohol, a rat trap, knives and a saw. These conditions suggested that teachers were already stressed out and overwhelmed, likely not receiving the support needed to handle even more children in their care with less training, like lawmakers were pushing. (As one child care director told me when I asked how higher staff-to-child ratios impact her: "Literally all you're doing is changing diapers and trying to keep them alive.") Here's a look at how I started reporting this story, and what we found about conditions for children as we were tracking deregulation: