To ensure that children benefit developmentally from attending care centres, Costa Rica should establish and enforce minimum standards across providers. These should include quality requirements (e.g. group size, staff qualifications, process and program variables) and clear goals for the development of early cognitive and socio-emotional skills. To support this, more attention needs to be given to the quality of the workforce in caiecentres - including their training, level of qualification, pay and appraisal - and stronger mechanisms put in place to monitor the quality of services. All centres should be inspected on a regular basis according to established standards.