Impact and process evaluation of BRAC’s Childcare Model in Bangladesh

To create access to childcare services for low-income urban households, BRAC piloted a model of home-based care entrepreneurship that connects local care entrepreneurs with households in need of childcare. Their "home-based childcare model" is designed to be a low-cost solution for labor-based, low-income communities by systemizing informal childcare practices and improving service quality through capacity building and technical guidance in play-based pedagogy and entrepreneurship to the care providers. This project is designed to work with both existing care providers, to improve their quality of service with the primary objective of meeting children’s developmental needs, and new caregivers to add and further strengthen care-based elements that build on everyday functioning to ensure socio-emotional well-being. This will be referred to as a ‘Care Model’.

Drawing on the lessons learned from the interventions to organize entrepreneurs to improve quality of childcare while maintaining the informality and affordability, BRAC’s Urban Development Program (UDP) and BRAC Institute of Education and Development (BRAC IED) will create new entrepreneurs offering this serve. The participants who will be entrepreneurs, will receive training on play-based childcare services, mental health support for children, and entrepreneurship skills (similar to the support that existing entrepreneurs receive to improve the quality of services) from BRAC IED.

2024-07-01

2025-06-30

The primary outcome of this experiment is to measure the impact of (the quality of) childcare on mothers.

For the RCT, there are different layers of outcome measures. For variations within treatment clusters, the main outcome measure will be the uptake of the childcare services by “info only”, “info + cash transfer” and “info + fees paid” arm. For this outcome, when comparing fees paid vs. cash transfer groups, the minimum detectable effect (MDE) is 8.8 percentage points assuming 30% uptake for one group and 90% power. If the comparison is made between fees paid (or cash transfer) with 4 observations per clusters from 150 clusters and the information only group (8 observations per cluster), the MDE of uptake comes to 7.7 percentage points. These impact estimates will be important to estimate market analysis such as – which type of mothers are mothers are more likely to avail the services under the three treatment conditions – as heterogeneity of impact on accessing services.

The secondary outcome of this RCT is to generate formative evidence of the “enterprise economics” of home-based childcare for new entrepreneurs.

BRAC UDP will identify 200 potential home-based daycare entrepreneurs and 16 target mothers for each provider.
150 entrepreneurs will receive play-based childcare and entrepreneurship training, forming the treatment group and the other 50 entrepreneurs will be the control group. Within the treatment group, mothers (potential clients) will be randomized into three arms -
T1: information-only,
T2: information+ cash transfer,
T3: information+childcare fees paid
to assess childcare impact on mothers' employment, mental health, and trust, with a focus on securing entrepreneurs' revenue. he study incorporates both experimental (randomized client support) and non-experimental (pre-post comparison) components, including a comparison of service quality between existing and new entrepreneurs.

Qualitative Research Design: The qualitative samples will consist of mothers (existing and potential childcare clients), existing and new childcare entrepreneurs, and BRAC staff. In-depth interviews with mothers (n=24), focus group discussions with mothers (n=3), in-depth interviews with childcare entrepreneurs (n=9) and key informant interviews (n=3) will be used alongside participant observation.

Childcare entrepreneurs will be sampled purposively from BRAC’s record of home-based childcare entrepreneurs.
Mothers will be identified using the census (to be carried out in November 2023), which will enable us to identify a sample with variation relating to current childcare practices and work situations. BRAC UDP support staff in each site will be identified for key informant interviews.

Not available

Randomization at both clusters and mothers level will be done after baseline survey using stata codes

In the first level of randomisation, we will list the 200 clusters (consisting of at least one potential new entrepreneurs and 16 eligible mothers) and we will then randomly assign 150 cluster to the treatment group and 50 entrepreneurs to the control group. One entreprenuer will be trained in the 150 treatment clusters, and the mothers in the treatment group will be further subdivided into three groups.

Within the treatment group, there will be a second layer of randomization, 16 potential client mothers will be selected randomly from each entrepreneur’s clients and then divided randomly into 3 treatment arms. 8 mothers will receive only information, 4 mothers will receive information plus cash subsidy and 4 mothers will receive ‘scholarship’.

Yes

200 clusters.

At least 200 clusters, 200 entrepreneurs, 3200 clients/mothers and their 3200 children. If we are able to create more than the targeted 200 clusters, we will still have 150 treatment clusters and the rest in control (i.e. potentially more than 50 control clusters).

The surveys will cover existing as well as potential entrepreneurs. While the sample of 100 existing entrepreneurs will be drawn from the ongoing projects by UDP, the potential new entrepreneurs will be selected as part of the RCT. Although the interventions will include 150 entrepreneurs, we anticipate identifying around 500 potential entrepreneurs who will be covered at baseline and two follow-up surveys. Further details are provided in the section on participant selection. The survey will include information on their employment and income, financial assets, intra-household relationships and aspirations.

The study will cover a sample of about 5,000 mothers, of whom 3,200 are part of the RCT. Survey module will cover time usage, employment, income, mental health, and stress as well as perceptions and norms on paid childcare services. While the mothers participating in the RCT will be surveyed at baseline, midline and endline, we will conduct two rounds of survey (baseline and endline) for the non-experimental sample.

Only those children who are part of the RCT will be included in quantitative survey at baseline and at endline. Since the children from the non-experimental sample categories are unlikely to observe any change in their childcare services, they will not be surveyed for impact evaluation. Despite the initial sampling of 3,200 children, the survey will be tailored to focus exclusively on the age group of 0-5Yrs, without the broader inclusion criterion of up to 8 years of age. The reason for this plan to survey younger children (0-5Yrs) is to limit the number of survey tools to be used as well as to cover children where we can expect larger effects of the interventions. Tools such as the Global Scale for Early Childhood Development (GSED), and the International Development Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) will be used to collect data at baseline and endline.

A sub-sample of study participant children will be included for tracking neurodevelopment with technical assistance from the ICDDR,B. Utilizing the Hyperfine scanner already installed at ICDDR,B, we will conduct neuroimaging on a subset of 300 children, drawn from both the control and treatment groups, at both baseline and endline assessments. The sub-sample can be drawn based on age groups (instead of a random sample of 2-5 years old) for whom the changes are most likely to be captured in the study. Measures of brain structure, childcare quality and stimulation and school readiness skills will be assessed to help demonstrate the importance and impact of (quality) childcare. With the main objective of measuring the second stage effect on children as an alternative measure (in addition to observational data collection on child development), the selection of sample from the treatment group may oversample T3 (info + fees paid) to have larger difference in service uptake between control and treatment at the first stage. The D&T resources will also be used to complement the qualitative anthropological research to identify at-home childcare practices and interactions that affect neurodevelopment across all the groups. Researchers from IED and BIGD will also participate in training to build their skills in interpretation of neuroimaging and gain hands-on experience by working with the collaborators.

The minimum detectable effect (MDE) for the labor force participation of mothers is 0.11 percentage points and for scale outcomes (e.g., average income) is 0.20 standard deviation when comparing the subsidy arm with the pure control. These MDEs for intention-to-treat (ITT) effects, and average treatment effects need to be 30% higher assuming 70% uptake. When comparing service uptake between the “information only” and “information + cash” arms, the MDE is much lower (i.e., better powered) since randomization is at the individual level.