Enrollment, Academic Persistence, Social Leveraging, and Social Support: A Multiple Case Study of CCAMPIS Campus-Based Child Care

The research informs the public about the CCAMPIS (Child Care Access Means Parents In School) grant program and how it is improving the academic persistence of five single-mother college students. Besides offering affordable on-campus child care that is both convenient and high quality, the CCAMPIS grant also provided these five single-mother college students the ability to improve their social leveraging and social support networks. Social support is having a support system to turn to in times of need. Social leveraging is having network ties to increase social mobility. This includes improving finances, access to better housing and job opportunities, and access to better education. Many single mothers come from resource-poor neighborhoods, and possibly families, where they lack social leveraging. Providing the CCAMPIS grant to help these single-mother college students progress through school also gives them the opportunity to improve their support system with child care facility staff, faculty, other students, and employees at the college. Connecting with these individuals also helped these single-mother college students improve their social leveraging networks and provide them with opportunities to learn new parenting techniques, gaining better job opportunities, and learning about more grants and funding that they can utilize to help lower the cost of school