At 4:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, Jim Van Horn flips through a sheaf of papers on the set of the Better Kid Care satellite television broadcast.

Wearing his trademark denim shirt, red suspenders, and Save the Children necktie, he is a calm eye in the center of a hurricane of activity. Klieg lights suspended from the rafters bathe him in an uncompromising glare, and three television cameras encircle him, their operators lurking in the cavernous studio's shadows. Chris Fagan, the show's producer, rushes in to check the earpiece concealed behind Van Horn's right ear, which allows him to hear control room instructions. Finally, the camera operators take their places. Van Horn sips from a glass of water, smiles up at the camera, and awaits his cue to begin the latest broadcast of the award-winning Better Kid Care program, the only satellite-uplinked child care training series in the country.

"Welcome to Better Kid Care," he announces. "Tonight's topic is creativity, and with me is Sheila Milnes, a Penn State educational specialist. Kids are naturally creative, and we should nurture that. At some point, most of us got the creative spirit knocked out of us." Van Horn is a consummate professional on camera. He greets viewers, introduces guests, and thanks callers. He's calm, thinks on his feet, and enjoys his role as host. He's unafraid to take his time with callers and guests, and he occasionally pauses to jot notes on his tablet. He's quick with a joke while Milnes considers an answer. A few minutes later, Van Horn cuts to a prerecorded video segment. Everyone on the set relaxes.

Jim Van Horn is used to running the show. As a former syndicated child care columnist and the director of the Better Kid Care program for 15 years, his name has become synonymous with quality child care across the country.

He first became interested in the field in the early 1980s, when his research indicated that quality child care in rural Pennsylvania was critical to meeting the needs of working parents--particularly mothers--and the companies they worked for. "The demographics of the workforce were changing," he says. "More mothers were going back to work. The research showed us that if parents worried about their children's welfare while working, their productivity decreased."

The early 1980s were particularly difficult years for parents. A shortfall in child care providers occurred at the same time the number of working mothers was steadily increasing. According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of working mothers with children under age 6 jumped from 33 to 55 percent between 1975 and 1993. The percentage of those with children under age 3 soared from 28 to 49 percent. Despite temporary declines, jobs in child care also increased overall. From 1972 to 1994, the number of day care jobs in the United States grew by approximately 250 percent, much more rapidly than the employment growth in most industries during that period. Many factors fueled this boom, including steadily increasing federal funding for day care and crucial changes in tax deductions for low- and middle-income parents.

A familiar figure to child care providers nationwide, family life specialist Jim Van Horn has directed Penn State's Better Kid Care Program for 15 years.

Today, the state Bureau of Child Day Care Services reports that more than 4,300 day care providers are registered in Pennsylvania. These providers receive mandatory training, are subject to facility inspections, and undergo a formal application procedure that includes background checks. But home-based caregivers must be registered only if they look after more than three children unrelated to them. "Unregistered family care is still the rule in rural Pennsylvania counties," notes Lyn Horning, assistant director of the Better Kid Care program. "Sullivan County, for instance, has only one registered day care provider. Many people can't afford to pay for formal child care." The number of informal day care arrangements that exist in the state is unknown, but developing ways to improve the quality of child care--given by registered or unregistered providers--is a big job.

"Basic research has demonstrated, again and again, that the more training providers get, the better the care they will provide," says Van Horn. In 1986, he launched his first child-care training program. That effort gave rise to today's Better Kid Care program, which provides an estimated 200,000 hours of training and receives approximately $1 million in government and private financial support each year. Van Horn also consults with companies across the nation to help them develop child care programs. In recognition of his efforts, Penn State presented him with its Award for Faculty Outreach in 1999. "But the real ownership of the Better Kid Care program resides in cooperative extension offices, not at University Park," he says. "This isn't my program, it's the counties' program. Penn State Cooperative Extension's family living agents and local offices are uniquely situated to train people who otherwise couldn't travel 50 miles to attend."

Rebecca Escott, based in the Lehigh Valley, is one of many family living agents who bring life to Better Kid Care. The free child care training programs she coordinates are consistently well attended and feature experts from fields such as social work and child psychology. "Our series on infant care was so popular that we had to turn away 40 people from the first session," she says. "Eventually we added a second one. We select different child care centers to host our workshops and try to choose locations that may be on the outskirts of a small community near caregivers' homes, or on urban bus routes, because we have caregivers who don't drive."

The most-requested workshop topics, according to Escott and Horning, are infant care, working with parents, and discipline. "A caregiver once told me that she had a six-year-old who had thrown a chair at her," says Escott. "That incident, along with some others, inspired us to develop a series called Caring for Children with Challenging Behaviors--not necessarily special needs or disabled children, but rather children who are coming out of divorce, live in violent environments, or are angry and defiant. Better Kid Care's flexibility allows us to develop our own programs to meet the needs of our caregivers."