ISU child care services officials said they have a high standard for their child care providers, despite a newly released survey that says most Iowa child care providers are not adequately trained and prepared to care for children.

According to the brochure, released by the Iowa Early Care and Education Professional Development Project, those who care for Iowa’s children often have low levels of education, inadequate training, low income, few benefits and experience high turnover rates.

However, Iowa State’s child care program at the College of Veterinary Medicine rates higher in most of those criteria, said Linda Bartleson, regional director of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which oversees the Vet Med program.

“I believe the children here receive a high level of quality child care and education,” Bartleson said.

Megan Mahony, senior in liberal studies, said she agrees the child care center at Vet Med is of high quality. Mahony said she used to take her daughter to child care in Des Moines, but now uses the child care at Vet Med.

“The teachers are what I think make Vet Med so good,” Mahony said. “They’re very attentive and interact well with the children.”

The brochure is based on a study released last year by ISU Extension Community Development-Data, Information and Analysis Laboratory that found child care providers can be split into two separate categories — career providers and non-career providers.

Kathlene Larson, research coordinator for the laboratory, coordinated data collection for the study.

She said with career providers, parents can ask questions about how long the provider has been providing child care and how long they plan on being child care providers.

With non-career providers, it’s harder for parents to acquire this information, because non-career providers are not required to register, Larson said.

Kerry Moore Kroneman, project coordinator for the Iowa Early Care and Education Professional Development Project, said she agrees non-career and career providers are important because of the differences in education and training. Without proper educational background and training, child care providers are unable to provide certain services for the children.

“The biggest problem with nonregistered people is that we don’t know who they are,” she said. “We have no way of knowing what kind of education or training they have had.”

Kroneman said although providers may not be required to register or have training, they should still be willing to receive training on their own.

She said the state also needs to focus on three important aspects — professional development, an increase in tax credits for parents and raising the income threshold for subsidized child care.

Professional development includes training and giving the provider recognition and respect for their services. These opportunities encourage providers to stay in the business, Larson said.

She said it’s important to help families deal with the increasing cost of child care. Higher pay and better benefits for the providers will make them want to continue in the child care profession, but it may become difficult for parents to pay, Larson said.

“We want to bridge the gap between what parents are paying and employees are making,” she said.

“These employees deserve quality pay and the parents deserve quality child care.”