About Us

The Day Care Council of New York, Inc., is the federation of 106 non-profit sponsoring boards that operate more than 220 publicly-funded child care centers and family child care programs in New York City.

The History of DCCNY

These sponsoring boards first banded together in 1948, to fight for the survival of their programs when child care funds were eliminated at the end of World War II.  At that time, New York City had 80 centers serving children of working parents.  With persistent effort and the support of New York City, the Day Care Council was incorporated in August 1952 as the coordinating body for the sponsoring boards.  Since then, the Council's membership has grown to include over 200 sponsoring boards serving more than 50,000 children in the five boroughs of New York City.

Achievements

Over the years, the Day Care Council has played a major role in achieving significant gains for child care programs in New York City, New York State, and often the nation, including the following:

• Obtained the first peace-time allocation of City tax money for child care programs (1948);
• Obtained the first commitment to provide child care space in every low-income public housing development (1962);
• Helped develop the first national organization of child care advocates.  This became the Day Care and Child Development Council of America, formerly National Committee for the Day Care of Children (1962);

•  Created the first program-wide staff pension plan for all personnel employed in New York City child care centers (1964);
•  Developed and implemented the first credit-bearing training program designed to upgrade the skills and careers of child care personnel (1969);
•  Developed in cooperation with the child care union, District Council 1707, the first comprehensive health and welfare program for child care personnel (1970);
•  Developed a parallel comprehensive health and welfare program for the child care directors, in cooperation with the Council of Supervisors and Administrators (1982);
•  Helped develop the first state-wide association of child care and child development councils established in the nation;  This became the New York State Child Care Coordinating Council. (1973);
•  Implemented a CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) contract that provided social work counseling services to families at member child care centers (1976);
•  Created a mediation program to address grievances filed by the union against child care employers (1977);
•  Created a remedial training for bookkeepers who failed the Agency for Child Development (ACD) competency test (1983);
•  Held a conference for employers to acquaint business leaders with the value of providing child care as a benefit for their employees (1984);
•  Trained 1,500 support staff of ACD child care centers in Child Abuse and Maltreatment Prevention (1985);
•  Awarded  the first state-funded Child Care Resource and Referral contracts. (1989).
  
  

Programs & Services

Currently the Day Care Council offers programs that respond to the needs of its membership and the public-at-large. For a full description of its programs, please visit our Programs & Services section on this website.