FW-HTF-R: The Future of Equitable Childcare Worker Technologies

家庭育儿工作对社会至关重要；数以百万计的父母依赖托儿工作者，他们要么来父母家里，要么在自己家里提供托儿服务。然而，托儿工作者面临着许多挑战，如不安全的工作环境和不明确的期望，难以获得培训和社会支持，工资低，带薪休假时间少。越来越多地用于家庭育儿的技术，包括摄像头和其他智能家居技术，以及匹配工人和家庭的平台（通常是短期“零工”就业），可能会加剧这些挑战。该项目的目标是更好地了解这些技术带来的风险和机遇，并设计新技术，使儿童保育工作者和服务、父母和儿童以及整个社会受益。该团队将更好地了解目前用于家庭育儿的技术所带来的风险：例如，现有的招聘平台和父母的决定如何影响甚至可能影响招聘决策，或者智能家居技术如何影响员工的隐私和自主权。该团队还将探索使工人和家庭之间更好地匹配的技术，以及改善家庭托儿工作者培训和支持网络的技术。总的来说，这个项目致力于实现一个未来，在这个未来中，托儿工作技术是双方同意使用的，对员工、儿童和托儿工作者都是互利的。这项研究植根于儿童保育工作技术的方法，这些方法优先考虑员工和员工的安全性、可持续性和赋权。为此，该项目首先对儿童保育工作者、家庭、儿童保育安置服务机构和支持个体工人业务需求的公司进行持续的实证研究。通过论坛和定向研究小组，该团队将全面了解现有的托儿生态系统，并与这些利益攸关方建立持续的支持性伙伴关系。这些发现和伙伴关系将成为该阶段的基础，该阶段侧重于设计和评估新技术，以支持利益攸关方的需求。该团队设想改善招聘、培训和工作条件的技术进步。在招聘方面，目标是设计平台和算法，将员工与家庭匹配起来，以满足双方的需求，同时避免招聘算法有时会带来的偏见风险。对于培训，该团队设想使用虚拟现实和虚拟代理来帮助员工为困难或罕见的儿童保育情况做好准备，并与其他利益相关者进行对话。对于工作条件，目标是开发系统，帮助工人与其他工人联系，以获得情感支持和福祉，围绕工作本身和工人业务管理提供信息支持，并为工人提供组织支持，以改善他们的工作条件。技术工作将通过设计方法进行研究，其中迭代设计方法和评估将有助于更正式地理解支持儿童保育工作的技术景观。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In-home childcare work is critical to society; millions of parents rely on childcare workers who either come to parents' homes, or who provide childcare service in their own homes. However, childcare workers face a number of challenges such as unsafe working environments and unclear expectations, poor access to training and social support, and low wages with minimal paid time off. These challenges may be exacerbated by technologies increasing used for in-home childcare, including cameras and other smart home technologies, and platforms that match workers and families (often for short-term "gig" employment). This project's goal is to better understand the risks and opportunities these technologies pose and to design new technologies that benefit childcare workers and services, parents and children, and society as a whole. The team will develop better understanding of risks posed by technologies currently used for in-home childcare: for instance, how existing hiring platforms and parents' decisions affect and perhaps bias hiring decisions, or how smart home technology may affect workers' privacy and autonomy. The team will also explore technologies that make better matches between workers and families, as well as technologies that improve in-home childcare workers' training and support networks. As a whole, this project works toward a future in which childcare work technology is consensually used and mutually beneficial for employees, children, and childcare workers.The research is rooted in approaches to childcare work technology that prioritize safety, sustainability, and empowerment among workers and employees. To that end, the project's starts with sustained empirical research with childcare workers, families, childcare placement services, and companies that support individual workers' business needs. Through forums and directed research groups, the team will build a comprehensive understanding of the existing childcare ecosystem and sustained, supportive partnerships with these stakeholders. These findings and partnerships will undergird the phase, which focuses on the design and evaluation of new technologies to support stakeholders' needs. The team envisions technical advances that improve hiring, training, and working conditions. For hiring, the goal is to design platforms and algorithms that match workers with families to meet both parties' needs while avoiding risks around bias that hiring algorithms sometimes raise. For training, the team envisions using virtual reality and virtual agents to help workers prepare for difficult or rare childcare situations and conversations with other stakeholders. For working conditions, the goal is to develop systems that help workers connect with other workers for emotional support and well-being, informational support around both the work itself and the management of the worker's business, and organizational support toward empowering workers to improve their working conditions. The technology work will take a research through design approach in which both iterative design approaches and the evaluation will contribute to a more formal understanding of the landscape of technologies to support childcare work.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.