What Children’s Cortisol Levels Tell Us About the Quality in Childcare Centres

The excellent 40 page article linked below is sourced from the  Australian Journal of Early Childhood 30(2), 29-39

The authors are Associate Professor Margaret Sims, Dr Andrew Guilfoyle and Professor Trevor Parry.

Abstract
The Australian childcare profession has watched with some concern results of research coming out of North America, indicating that child care is not good for children.  This research identifies undesirable outcomes in children’s development and behaviour as a result of child care attendance.  How does this research apply to Australian children in Australian child care centres?  Australian research is limited and this paper reports on results to date of an Australian study of children’s biological stress levels (measured using salivary cortisol) and their relationship with quality child care service delivery.  Results demonstrate clearly that children attending high quality child care have lower stress levels across the day than children attending satisfactory or unsatisfactory programmes.  Poor quality child care is not good for children.

Click on this link to see the pdf file:  what-childrens-cortisol-levels-tell-us-about-quality.pdf