Cooperative food operations therefore require close supervision. Care providers for very young children can be trained or untrained teachers or day care workers, mothers, or other women from the community. Ongoing supervision is necessary to make a program effective. The cost of supervision needs to be included in operations. In addition to monitoring program implementation, each project needs to incorporate in its design an evaluation of program impact.
Governments can contain costs by targeting services narrowly so that they reach only the neediest.
These measures have generally failed to lower costs as much as expected, however, and in some instances have compromised program quality. As might be expected, moreover, states with less stringent standards had more child care centers and classrooms of low quality. Yet the same study found that better-quality services cost, on average, just 10 percent more than mediocre care. Most of the centers studied offered services far below professional standards. But the study confirmed earlier findings that centers paying higher wages attracted better-quality staff.