The time you pick up your children from the care center represents a window of opportunity to find out how they spent their day without you. You ask the caregiver with interest (and sometimes a little concern): Did my little girl drink her milk today? Did she take a nap after lunch? Did she have a fight with one of her classmates? But what information do you really have about the care your children are receiving?

We know that the quality of processes, and particularly the frequency, type, and nature of interactions between children and caregivers, is what most influences children’s development. But at the same time, it is the most difficult thing to observe-for us as parents, for obvious reasons-yet for the staff of a child care program itself.

How are we doing in the region?

Several studies show that the quality of interactions between children and caregivers in centres in the region is often very low. This statement is supported by one of the most common tools for measuring this dimension of quality: the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. This instrument was developed in the United States and is scored from 1 to 7, with the highest score indicating the highest quality of interactions.

The domain, or section, of “Pedagogical Support in Learning”-which measures how caregivers guide children’s learning, support their cognitive and linguistic development, give feedback and promote participation-is likely to be the greatest challenge for the region.

Are the programs in the region measuring the quality of the processes?

These results show that it is a priority to focus our efforts on ensuring the quality of the service children are receiving. In order to do this, it is necessary for programs in the region to periodically measure their quality.

Having a picture of the quality of care over time provides useful information for program staff that can be used to guide and improve their practices.

However, there are currently few programs in the region that monitor the quality of their centers in a frequent and systematic manner.

Moreover, the few countries that measure the quality of their services almost always do so through structural indicators, such as basic infrastructure and the profile of caregivers, and rarely choose to include process variables.

If process quality is so important, why isn’t it being measured?

According to a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank, published in Plos One, one of the main reasons is the lack of adequate tools for frequent and scaled-up monitoring of the quality of services in the region’s programs.

The study was conducted in 404 centers in Ecuador, where the four most common instruments used in the last two decades to measure the quality of child care centers were administered, with a focus on the interactions between children and their caregivers.

The researchers’ first observation is that all of the existing tools for measuring quality in these centers have so far been developed in the United States. For this reason, it is very important to carefully adapt and validate them when applying them in a context as different as Ecuador.

If process quality is so important, why isn’t it being measured?

According to a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank, published in Plos One, one of the main reasons is the lack of adequate tools for frequent and scaled-up monitoring of the quality of services in the region’s programs.

The study was conducted in 404 centers in Ecuador, where the four most common instruments used in the last two decades to measure the quality of child care centers were administered, with a focus on the interactions between children and their caregivers.

The researchers’ first observation is that all of the existing tools for measuring quality in these centers have so far been developed in the United States. For this reason, it is very important to carefully adapt and validate them when applying them in a context as different as Ecuador.

The second observation is that the same variables that are vital to ensuring quality care for young children are also those that are most difficult to capture. Properly measuring the quality of interactions is time-consuming, costly, and requires expert interpretation and judgment for measurement.

Given the financial and human resource challenges faced by programs in the region, using tools such as CLASS for systematic, frequent, and scaled-up quality monitoring is impractical.

Where should we go?

If programs are to ensure the quality of their services, it is essential to investigate feasible alternatives for the region-that is, tools that take into account the context, challenges, and specific needs of the programs, while incorporating key indicators of process quality.

Ideally, these tools should be simple enough to be administered during a routine observation of service quality by the same care program staff. They should also provide feedback that can be used by the program as a strategy for mentoring and accompanying caregivers.

There is undoubtedly a growing interest on the part of Latin American governments in improving the quality of child care centers and several efforts are being made to carry out the necessary measurements to achieve this.