Still Waiting

Families in the rural town of Immokalee, Florida are faced with the problem of finding a high-quality place to care for their infants and toddlers while they work, due to a lack of space in child development centers that accept infants and toddlers. One such center is the Guadalupe Center, a child development center which currently has a waitlist of over 400 families. This dissertation in practice uses qualitative methods to interview and explore the stories of eleven families who have been on the center’s waitlist for over one year, examining what they are doing for childcare in the meantime and how satisfied they are with the current childcare they are using. Families told about what things their children did during the day, what they would change about their child’s current care situation, and why they chose the Guadalupe Center as the place where they most wanted their child to be. Recommendations include dissemination of the information to local, state, and national organizations, as well as to the local stakeholders of the Guadalupe Center.