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于来到父母家中或在自己家里提供托儿服务的育儿工作者。然而，儿童保育工作者面临着一些挑战，如不安全的工作环境和不明确的期望，获得培训和社会支持的机会很少，以及工资低，带薪假期最少。越来越多的技术被用于家庭育儿，包括摄像头和其他智能家居技术，以及为工人和家庭牵线搭桥的平台(通常是短期的零工就业)，这些挑战可能会加剧。该项目的目标是更好地了解这些技术带来的风险和机会，并设计造福于儿童保育工作者和服务、父母和儿童以及整个社会的新技术。该团队将更好地理解目前用于家庭育儿的技术带来的风险：例如，现有的招聘平台和父母的决定如何影响甚至偏见招聘决定，或者智能家居技术可能如何影响员工的隐私和自主权。该团队还将探索在工作人员和家庭之间更好地匹配的技术，以及改善居家托儿人员培训和支持网络的技术。总体而言，该项目致力于建设一个双方同意使用托儿工作技术并对员工、儿童和托儿工作者互惠互利的未来。该研究植根于托儿工作技术的方法，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人员、家庭、儿童保育安置服务机构和支持个别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。这些调查结果和伙伴关系将巩固这一阶段，该阶段的重点是设计和评估新技术，以支持利益攸关方的需求。该团队设想了技术进步，以改善招聘、培训和工作条件。在招聘方面，我们的目标是设计平台和算法，让员工与家人匹配，以满足双方的需求，同时避免招聘算法有时会引发的偏见风险。在培训方面，该团队设想使用虚拟现实和虚拟代理来帮助工人为困难或罕见的育儿情况以及与其他利益相关者的对话做好准备。在工作条件方面，目标是开发系统，帮助工人与其他工人建立联系，获得情感支持和福祉，围绕工作本身和工人企业管理提供信息支持，并为赋予工人权力以改善其工作条件提供组织支持。技术工作将采取通过设计进行研究的方法，在这种方法中，迭代设计方法和评估将有助于更正式地了解支持儿童保育工作的技术格局。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.