In the Portland Metropolitan area, a wide range of programs and facilities, including informal arrangements, are used for the care of children outside their homes during some part of the day. These programs and facilities include those whose primary purpose is child development, education, or recreation (Headstart, Parent and Child Centers, Nursery Schools, Kindergartens, Extended School Services, and Play School). They also include day care provided by non-profit organizations such as churches and hospitals by private proprietory day care operators and independent family day care homes, and by employers and labor unions in addition to cooperatives. These programs involve a large number of personnel of diversified backgrounds and training. They include professionals, paraprofessionals and nonprofessionals. These programs need to be classified in order to facilitate sound planning and development of training programs to meet the needs of such manpower. For purposes of this study, they were viewed as constituting a social system. The emphasis was on the staff working directly with children. In addition to the operators or directors in charge of most facilities, day care centers have at least one other staff member who works directly with children. These include teachers and social workers. The objectives of the study were to describe the manpower elements in the day care centers and to ascertain training needs and present modes of agency training activities. It was expected to develop a training proposal to meet the needs of the manpower elements identified in the day care centers; if it was so determined by the results of the survey

This research was undertaken at the request of the the St. Martin Day Nursery staff and advisory board to assist them in assessing what the consequences of relocating their day care center would be to the present users and possible future users. It was requested that special emphasis be given to where users live and work and the method of transportation they used to bring children to and from the center. Therefore, our research has been exploratory, planned more to search for answers and to attempt to generate hypotheses than to test hypotheses. It was not our purpose to designate where the future location of the St. Martin Day Nursery should be, but rather to point up some things about convenience factors which the Advisory Board might wish to consider in reaching their decision.

This study endeavors to identify those daycare centers in the Portland Metro area that provide service to the handicapped or special needs child. ("Special needs" refers to children that are handicapped with varying degrees of severity.) It discusses the value and importance of the daycare experience for the young child, noting that daycare options available to the normal child are not usually available to the atypical child.