Local governments are trying a variety of ideas to help families with the cost of child care, including an Oregon tax credit that is showing impressive results.

Seven years ago, Oregon created a tax credit to support two projects with ambitious goals, such as cutting the cost of child care to ten percent of a family’s income and boosting wages for workers in the field.

A review of one of the programs found parents who received subsidies paid nearly $100 a month less for child care, $413 compared to $506 among a control group of families, used more child care and reported a drop in financial stress.

Broader impacts were even more compelling.

…Subsidy parents reported that the subsidy was playing a key role not only in helping them to afford child care, but also in helping them pay for basic living expenses, and allowed them to spend more hours in paid employment. – “Child Care Community Fund: Year 2 Evaluation Report.” 9/09.

The project also improved professional development with wage enhancements. But, it is unclear if the effort improved child care quality.

While child care quality scores increased over time, this increase was evident for both the CCCF and control group. Quality score data highlight several areas in which there is room for improvement, and with concentrated effort in those areas during Year 3, CCCF providers may have the opportunity to improve quality relative to control providers.

Lack of sleep linked to childhood obesity: New research suggests a connection between insufficient sleep among kids and childhood obesity, NPR reports.

(Janice Bell, a researcher at the University of Washington) looked at federal data collected on nearly 2,000 children and compared those who slept 10 hours or more a night with those who slept less. She also looked at how much the children weighed over a five-year period. The most striking findings had to do with infants and toddlers. The study appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.