The child care closure at UNO is reflective of a concerning trend: Across the country, universities, school districts and hospitals are shutting down affiliated child care programs at an alarming rate as the cracks in America’s child care system begin to widen into fissures.

Since the beginning of 2025, a growing number of institutions have closed or put forth plans to close on-site child care programs that serve employees and, in the case of universities, student parents. These include universities such as , , and the , along in Washington, Arizona, and Kentucky. During the same time, public K-12 districts — including in Michigan, in Missouri and in Colorado — have announced similar closures, as have hospital systems in , and .

In almost every case, administrators are pointing to rising costs as a key culprit. Indeed, absent public funding, large institutions cannot run a sustainable child care business, particularly as most institutionally-affiliated programs offer tuition discounts to employees. In the case of Baptist Health, a nonprofit health care organization in Arkansas, the system said it $2 million a year operating two of its child care centers.

While there may have been a time when such losses were manageable, these institutions are being buffeted by other headwinds. Many colleges, universities and school districts are dealing with declining enrollment numbers that have . A key federal funding program that helps colleges and universities subsidize child care for student parents — Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) — has been held flat, which is a functional decrease in the face of inflation and rapidly rising child care costs.

Meanwhile, hospital systems are struggling with Medicaid cuts, rising labor costs, and tariffs increasing the costs of imported medicines and supplies; The American Hospital Association a “perfect storm of financial pressures.” 

The rash of institutional closures should be a stark warning about the future of employer-sponsored child care. That term usually conjures the concept of private companies offering on-site centers or subsidies for child care as a workplace perk. But in practice, these institutions function similarly: They operate on-site child care for their community members, such as staff, students or patients — and in many cases, the programs have been around for decades. In a sense, we might consider institutionally-affiliated child care programs the best-case version of employer-supported care. The institutions are often anchored in public missions, subject to greater accountability and backed by generally reliable funding streams. Yet, even these programs are disappearing.

If institutions designed to serve the public can’t sustain employer-linked child care, it raises a larger question about how realistic it is to . 

It seems clear that, reluctant as the decision may be, child care quickly finds itself on the chopping block when budgets tighten. Often, it is viewed as a nice-to-have for institutions, even while it’s a must-have for families. When programs close and families lose subsidized care, they’re often forced into a wild scramble for a spot among scarce options. With the aforementioned headwinds only projected to worsen, more closures are, unfortunately, likely on the way. 

To be clear, the closures don’t signal that on-site child care is inherently flawed. In fact, the passionate reaction of families and providers show just how valued these programs are. The question is, how should such programs be funded? A model that relies on institutions themselves bearing the cost seems to be breaking down. Similarly, depending on a single funding stream, like CCAMPIS, is clearly risky, as it keeps programs in a constant state of vulnerability — just one unfavorable grant cycle away from collapse.

What’s needed, instead, is a way to wrap institutionally-affiliated child care into a broader publicly-funded system, as is done in nations like and . 

The child care sector may well be entering a phase where Band-Aids like incentivizing employers to offer child care benefits like on-site programs or stipends can no longer hold back the bleeding. If universities and hospital systems — to say nothing of Fortune 500 companies like and — are increasingly unable or unwilling to maintain their child care programs despite evidence of their positive impacts, then a course correction is needed. 

Policymakers are rushing to incentivize employer-sponsored child care at a moment when the American economy is slowing down and financial headwinds are picking up. If there’s any good news, it’s that about five thousand years ago humans invented a way to pool individual resources and redistribute them for collective benefit. In other words, the antidote to institutional child care closures is the same as the antidote to mom and pop child care closures: tax dollars. 

When she recently separated from her partner, it became critical that she get a job. She was hired for a position with a nonprofit last summer, and shortly after that, she went online and applied to get a subsidy so she could afford child care for her three children, ages 2, 4 and 8 years old.

Two months went by before she got a response, she said, only to be told that she had been put on a waitlist. It gave her “a moment of panic,” she recalled. “I need my bills to be paid but I also need somebody to watch my children.” There was no way she could afford the out-of-pocket cost of child care on her pay. It costs a year, on average, for center-based care for a toddler in Virginia.

A growing number of parents have been confronted recently with a situation similar to Moyer’s. Strapped for child care funding, have started waitlists for child care subsidies — or lengthened existing ones — putting new applicants in limbo when they need immediate help paying for care. Virginia is one of 14 states that have recently instituted or expanded waitlists, according to Child Care Aware of America. 

Moyer ended up asking neighbors and friends to watch her children, “people that I normally wouldn’t have asked to watch my kids,” she said. She installed some cameras in her house to make herself feel more secure. But “I wasn’t as comfortable as I would have been had they been in a licensed, insured day care,” she noted, adding that she had to work around the schedules of the people who agreed to watch her children, even though she wasn’t able to control her own schedule at work. There were some days when the person she had arranged to watch her kids canceled at the last minute, sending her scrambling to find someone else.

“It was very, very emotionally stressful, because I had never been away from my kids up until this moment and suddenly I’m leaving them at home with other people,” she recalled.

Moyer had to wait four months to get off Virginia’s waitlist, she said. Then, when she was finally taken off, she had to fill out all the paperwork again, which required getting documents from her employer and finding a child care center that she could enroll her children in. It took her another two weeks before she was actually getting help, she said. 

Waiting lists for child care subsidies are not new. “It has been true for a long time that there are not enough resources to provide subsidies to every eligible family,” said Anne Hedgepeth, senior vice president of policy & research at Child Care Aware of America. “We’re not meeting families’ needs with our current subsidy system.” In 2021, were eligible for subsidies under state rules, but just 1.8 million received them, or less than a quarter of those who qualified. 

But the child care sector has, in the past five years, received more funding that it typically does. It received in federal COVID relief funding meant to prop the sector up, which some states to eliminate waitlists, among other changes. The Child Care and Development Block Grant, which mostly funds state subsidies, received a increase in funding in 2023 and then another increase in 2024. Some states, for their part, also devoted some of their own dollars to the sector.

Now with the billions in COVID relief funding gone, and with big state budget cuts looming due to to Medicaid and other safety net programs passed by Republicans in Congress, many states have searched for ways to reduce spending. Waiting lists have become a common tool. States are “not able to serve all eligible families, and they’re having to do things like institute waitlists that limit families who are coming in,” Hedgepeth said. 

Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia have recently started putting at least some parents on waiting lists for child care subsidies or have significantly expanded the number of parents on their lists, according to Child Care Aware of America. Missouri also   a waitlist starting March 1. 

The number of states with waitlists has nearly doubled since early 2022, according to Child Care Aware of America. “Many on this list did not have waitlists when there were additional dollars available,” Hedgepeth said, and “were able to serve all of the families that were applying.”

This situation “does tell us that the funding amount that was flowing to states during the pandemic was an amount that better reflected the total need in the system,” Hedgepeth said. The increase in states using waitlists as an approach to cut costs is bad on its own, but it’s also a canary in the coal mine, she said, signaling deeper troubles in the child care system.

“A single state may not be able to replace federal funding,” she noted, but if it’s only spending the bare minimum without dedicating general funds “that’s a real opportunity for state policymakers.” , for example, has instituted waitlists without investing any additional funding for the sector. 

For parents like Moyer, the impact of state waitlists can be devastating, Hedgepeth said. Many families don’t bother to go through the steps to get a subsidy or might not even know that they’re eligible in the first place. For those who actually fill out the paperwork and submit it, “which is often no easy task,” she said, finding out that they won’t get any help for a number of months or, possibly, indefinitely “can be really disheartening.” Parents likely face impossible choices about how to make sure their children are cared for while they work. “This is not something they have time to wait for,” she said. “They need care today for their kids.” That’s especially true for mothers, as women’s labor force participation has , and many parents child care problems are keeping them from work. 

Providers, meanwhile, often suffer as well. In Indiana, for instance, the freeze in new subsidies left some providers who were counting on enrolling new infants with empty infant classrooms. The freeze, along with deep reimbursement cuts, has put them in a difficult financial position. “Your highest rates of pay comes from your infants,” Dionne Miller, who runs Room to Bloom Learning Academy in Indianapolis, previously told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “We no longer have that stream of income coming in.” More than 100 providers closed last September and October after the state’s changes were put in place.

On top of the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds, ongoing federal funding has become increasingly unstable. In December, the Trump administration announced that, after resurfacing fraud allegations in Minnesota’s child care and other public programs, it was freezing all child care funding to the state and reinstituting a Defend the Spend requirement for the Child Care Development Fund, which provides key funding for state subsidies across the country. With the change, all states now have to provide justification, including receipts and photo evidence, in order to draw down the money that was already appropriated by Congress. 

The administration also sought to completely freeze CCDF and other federal funding to five states, although that action has been by a judge. And the administration rescinded Biden-era rules that paid child care providers in a more stable way. 

Given all of this, Hedgepeth said, “I would not be surprised to see more states institute waitlists.” 

“We are in some ways back to the pre-pandemic conversation of the way in which child care and early learning are situated in our priorities,” she added. It’s “not receiving the full support that it needs despite what we know about its critical importance to families and economies.”

Updated March 27, 2026: In response to this story, YouTube terminated six channels for violating the platform’s terms of service and one channel for violating its spam policy.

In a video that has been played almost 50,000 times since it was posted five months ago, two cartoon children sing along as they guide viewers through the experience of riding in a car amid a vividly colored, utopian backdrop. 

At first, the seems harmless. The song is upbeat and informative. The animation aligns with the promised subject. 

Except, hold on a second, did those lyrics just say, “Red means stop, and green means right”? And why are the characters changing in every frame — different hairstyles and colors, slightly different outfits for the girl and boy? 

Worst of all, for a video that purports to be “educational,” the visuals are sending precisely the wrong message about riding in a car. 

The video opens with the children riding, without seatbelts, in the front row of a moving vehicle. The next scene shows the girl defying physics, floating alongside a moving car, while the boy is seated in what appears to be the hood of the vehicle as it travels backward down a busy street. The third and fourth scenes show the children walking in the middle of the road with moving cars behind them. 

It’s not hard to imagine how the video could have gotten so many views. 

Maybe a parent needs to complete a task — fold some laundry, get dinner ready, hop in the shower — and is searching for an age-appropriate video on YouTube to entertain their toddler during that short time. Perhaps that toddler, increasingly independent and prone to running off, needs a better grasp of road safety. “Vroom Vroom! Car Ride Song | Educational Nursery Rhyme for Kids” presents itself as a win-win solution. 

But children’s media experts say this is AI-generated “slop,” and that it has infiltrated the internet, preying on young children and their unsuspecting caregivers. 

“We’re at the beginning of a monster problem, and we have to get hold of it quickly,” said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University and senior fellow at Brookings Institution who studies child development. 

She and other researchers, including Dr. Dana Suskind, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, have that AI-derived products for babies and children need to be reined in. 

“This is not neutral content,” said Suskind, author of the forthcoming book . “I think of this as toddler AI misinformation at an industrial scale. It’s very risky for the developing brain.”

It’s hard to say just how pervasive this type of content is, but it’s clear the problem is widespread and getting worse. One published by video-editing company Kapwing in November 2025 found that about 21% of YouTube’s feed consists of low-quality, AI-generated videos. 

, the creator of the “Vroom Vroom! Car Ride Song,” has posted more than 10,000 videos since its first release just seven months ago, in August 2025. That’s an average of about 50 new videos each day. , meanwhile, has published about 3,900 videos to YouTube in its entire 20 years on the platform. 

The cognitive decline associated with the consumption of AI slop — such as a shortened attention span, decreased focus and mental fog — is sometimes referred to as “brainrot.” But when the audience is children, there’s not much to rot, Suskind said. Because a child’s brain is still in its early development, still being built, what you get instead, she said, is “brain stunt.”

“Every experience is building a million new neural connections,” Suskind said of children who are still in their early years. “You will be unintentionally wiring the brain in incorrect ways.”

That comes at a cost. A child may absorb the implicit messages of something like the Vroom Vroom video and end up mimicking the “downright dangerous” behaviors they saw depicted there, said Carla Engelbrecht, who has created digital experiences for children’s media brands such as Sesame Street, PBS Kids and Highlights for Children and considers herself an AI educator and creator.

Engelbrecht is also when it comes to child-targeted AI slop. She has found countless examples of AI-generated videos that could cause real physical harm.

“The more content I find,” she said, “the more horrified I get.”

They include videos of a being chased by a T-Rex; a crawling biting into an apple that appears bloody, swallowing whole grapes (a major) and eating honey (which carries the potentially fatal risk of ); and a eating raw elderberries (which are toxic when uncooked).

But there’s another category of AI slop in kids’ media, she said, with consequences that are more difficult to capture. These videos claim to pertain to learning and development, focusing on topics like literacy and numeracy, but due to the speed with which they are produced and the lack of quality checks, they end up introducing or enforcing the wrong lessons. And sometimes, the errors don’t come until midway through the content. That means if a parent previews the first few seconds of a video, they may miss the unreliable information that appears later in the clip.

A about vowels includes visuals of consonants. It also depicts letters on screen that don’t align with the audio overlay. A promising to teach about the 50 U.S. states sings along as butchered state names appear in text at the bottom of the screen — Ribio Island, Conmecticut, Oklolodia, Louggisslia. A about the seven continents frequently shows a compass with more than four points and indecipherable symbols where the “N,” “S,” “E” and “W” should be.

These may seem like silly slips from a machine, but for a child, every “input” is part of their learning process, Engelbrecht explained. “Mixed signals means you are delaying them learning the cause and effect of a thing,” she said. “If you learn that red is blue and blue is red, that’s a delay.”

“If you’re inconsistent, it takes that much longer to learn,” she added. “Every delay they have means everything else gets pushed back. That’s taking their executive function offline to go learn nonsense.”

Amid all of this internet muck, the question of responsibility is a tricky one.

“Fundamentally, everybody has a responsibility,” Engelbrecht said, including platforms like YouTube; companies that operate large-language models, like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic; the people creating and publishing these poor-quality videos intended to reach kids; and parents. 

YouTube’s current requires creators to disclose videos that have been generated by or altered with AI when that content “seems realistic.” This does not apply to cartoons and — which seems to be the majority of what’s reaching children — because it has long been assumed to be fictional content, Engelbrecht explained. 

The platform does have stricter “” for content targeting children than it does for its general viewership, said Boot Bullwinkle, a YouTube spokesperson, in a statement. It also has a “.” (These web pages, however, do not specifically address the use of AI.)

Due to the volume of content on the platform, YouTube does not catch every video that violates its policies. (It did take action against at least seven channels on the platform in response to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ’s reporting, including terminating two.) 

“The trust that parents and families put in YouTube is a responsibility we take very seriously, and we’ve invested deeply in age-appropriate environments that empower parents,” Bullwinkle wrote in the statement. “YouTube Kids, for instance, offers industry-leading parental controls and rigorous designed to provide a safer experience for families.”

YouTube Kids is a distinct version of the platform with content that has been curated for children from birth to 12. Many families continue to use the main YouTube platform to view children’s content, though, which means many creators still have an audience and earning opportunities there. None of the AI-generated videos reviewed for this story were found on YouTube Kids, although recent in The New York Times found AI videos had penetrated that space as well.

Sierra Boone, executive producer of Boone Productions, a children’s media production company that makes original content for children ages 2 to 6, noted that kid-friendly competitors to YouTube, such as by Common Sense Media and , do exist. But they have struggled to break through to families. 

“Overcoming that juggernaut is extremely difficult,” Engelbrecht said of YouTube. “There’s a graveyard full of failed attempts to create a safe YouTube alternative.”

Boone suggested that some effective labeling would go a long way, not unlike the “” LinkedIn is phasing in, which aim to disclose when media has been created or edited by AI, in part or in whole. 

Engelbrecht thinks labels are a good idea, not least because they would be important for AI literacy, but she also believes they would penalize creators like her who use AI “thoughtfully” in their work. (She is , among other projects, an AI tool that detects AI slop in children’s videos on YouTube.)

As for who’s behind the videos, some of it originates overseas, but plenty is home-grown, created by Americans with access to phones or computers who are just trying to “make a quick buck,” as Boone put it. 

These people are often using AI at every step of the process — to develop themes and scripts for children’s videos, to generate the videos, and to automate the process of publishing the content regularly on “, in which the creator is anonymous and has no on-camera presence, Engelbrecht explained.

A little over a year ago, a popular content creator posted a video to YouTube in which she raves about a “huge opportunity” that would lead to “many millionaires.” The opportunity? AI-generated animated videos that inexperienced users could create with a simple prompt in just minutes. The target audience? Young children. 

That video has been viewed more than 335,000 times. 

“AI in general isn’t inherently good or bad, but it exposes people’s intentions,” said Boone, whose production studio is responsible for . 

The flood of AI-generated content, she added, reveals how many people have “no regard for children or how they’re impacted,” as long as it benefits them. 

For Boone, who works painstakingly with her team on every episode of The Naptime Show — researching, writing the script, editing the script, placing props, doing table reads, going to set, filming, editing the video, publishing and promoting the final product — creating children’s media is an “honor” that should be taken seriously. 

“The very foundation of creating children’s media is you are creating something that a child, in their core developmental years, is going to be consuming,” Boone said. “So what is the level of intention that you’re bringing to that? I think we need to be holding the people who are uploading this content more accountable.”

Ultimately, though, in the absence of more regulation or content moderation, the burden falls on parents. 

Parents are likely putting YouTube videos in front of their children in the first place because “they are already so stretched,” said Suskind, who still sees patients in her pediatric practice and interacts with families often. So it’s inherently challenging to ask them to more closely monitor the content that is coming through their children’s screens. 

Yet that is what must be done, Hirsh-Pasek said. Until a better solution emerges, the onus is on parents to separate the slop from “the good stuff.”

“We owe it to our kids to protect them,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “That’s what they look to parents for, to keep them in safe spaces. If we don’t deal with that or do anything about that, we’ve absconded [from] our responsibility.”

McNally, a Democratic state representative who lives in west Youngstown, Ohio, relies on her neighbors — who include nurses, police officers and public utility workers — as her North Star for how families are doing. These are people, she describes as having “job titles where they should be able to sustain a family and a household, but aren’t even coming close.” She hears how they are struggling to pay bills, how they can’t afford back-to-school supplies for their kids, or how long they will wait to turn the air conditioners on at their houses in the summer. 

that  most families spent their expanded 2021 child tax credit for everyday necessities: groceries, utilities, housing and clothing — the very same things she, her husband and neighbors were doing. The extra payment, between $3,000 and $3,600 annually per child — or a monthly check between $250 and $300 — brought the child poverty rate to a record low of 5.2%, . also shows that the funds dramatically improved overall well-being for families, many of whom were able to use the money to pay down bills or give a bit of breathing room to their finances. supports its bipartisan appeal. 

After the federal tax credit expired at the end of 2021, McNally introduced the in 2023, a measure she has since re-introduced in each session of the Ohio General Assembly since. A version of her proposal even made it into , before being overridden by the Republican’s veto-proof majority in the statehouse. 

McNally wasn’t the only lawmaker to view the child tax credit as a vehicle for families with young children to improve outcomes — and Ohio wasn’t the only state to take that approach. Altogether, 22 states and D.C. have created , though only child tax credits will be active in 2026. 

“States were curious about how to fill the gaps left behind,” said Ryan Vinh, a research analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, who has studied the impact of the child tax credit.

by the Columbia center found that the state-level child tax credits helped mitigate the loss of the expanded federal credit. And the center’s forthcoming research, Vinh said, shows that the states that have expanded their child tax credits are seeing similar effects with bringing people out of poverty, but not to the extent the federal government’s impact was, largely because states are not able to offer the full amount of $3,000 to $3,600 per child. 

In July 2025, the federal , from $2,000 to $2,200 per child, although the new version limited the ability to receive a refund and created new eligibility criteria so that some families who were previously able to access the credit no longer could. Refundability is particularly crucial for the families in poverty, as it requires a family to make enough income to have a sufficiently high tax burden, rather than being able to access the funding outright. 

The ability to zero-in on child poverty is incredibly effective for state lawmakers who see this as an issue to address, and it’s drawing the attention of other states who are seeing the impact.

“It’s a domino effect,” said Neva Butkus, a senior analyst who leads the state child tax credit work for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. States and localities seeking to add or expand a child tax credit work with her team to come up with what they want to solve for — in some cases it may be reducing the number of families in poverty, or it might be creating a smaller tax credit that more families can access, improving overall affordability. 

Butkus observed that there are clusters of states that tend to follow one another, such as those based on geography, and that conversations surrounding the child tax credit (CTC) among state lawmakers transcend political affiliation. She points to the CTC that McNally and DeWine pushed for and one that as examples of forward momentum in red and purple states. “We are seeing it become more commonplace, and lawmakers across the aisle are seeing the value in the credits, as affordability becomes more of a focus.”

The CTC is “both an affordability and anti-poverty mechanism,” Butkus said. “Lawmakers understand the rising costs associated with raising children. With recent years, lawmakers and advocacy groups come to us with poverty alleviation really as a focus,” she said. But addressing refundability tends to be one of the differences along party lines, she noted, as some legislators view fully refundable tax credits to be an anti-work incentive.

Vinh points out that there is not strong evidence that the fully refundable child tax credit negatively impacted workforce participation, and on the 2021 expanded tax credit found a “muted” impact on employment.

But there are limits to what states can do to address poverty. They are required to balance their budgets and cannot run a deficit — unlike the federal government — and cannot do deficit financing. “With the upcoming changes to Medicaid and SNAP, states have to take on additional cost sharing,” Vinh said. “To the extent that states have to find money in their budget, these kinds of gaps at the federal level create some concern about being able to fund more ambitious tax credit policies.” 

States that do opt for a generous child tax credit may see its impact relatively quickly. Butkus cites Minnesota as an example, explaining that in 2023, the state legislature used a budget surplus to  implement a child tax credit of $1,750 per child; in 2024 this was offered as an , a similar model to the checks in the mail that families received in 2021. from the Columbia center cite that this change will cut child poverty by one-third.

In neighboring Iowa, though, the legislature opted for a described as “a total windfall to the state’s of households.”

Ohio, too, opted to go in a different direction, despite having a Republican governor who championed the proposed child tax credit. In 2025, the child tax credit was nixed, but the state for the Cleveland Browns to build a new stadium. The state also switched to a , which, like Iowa’s changes, lowered taxes for the wealthiest residents..

McNally plans to keep pushing for the expanded child tax credit in Ohio, though she is aware that the outcome of the 2026 governor election will likely foretell whether she can gain momentum. Part of what she wants to do is continue selling it to families, who tend to tune out conversations about taxes. 

“Taxes are complicated, dry and dull,” she said. “But when I say ‘remember when you got the check in the mail, once a month from the federal government? You want to do that again?’ They said ‘oh that is awesome.’ They just want to get that money in the mail so they can buy groceries. They don’t care what is happening behind the scenes to get that.”

In fiscal year 2025, 1.59% of all federal spending was dedicated to supporting children from birth to age 3, down about 20% from its peak of 1.98% in 2021, when adjusted for inflation. 

That’s according to , an annual report from First Focus on Children, a nonprofit, bipartisan advocacy organization that seeks to elevate children and families in federal policy and budget decisions. 

For the 2025 edition, the authors tracked nearly 150 federal programs that invest in infants and toddlers, including mandatory programs such as Medicaid and SNAP and discretionary programs such as the Child Care and Development Fund, Head Start and Preschool Development Grants. Their findings, they said, confirm that the U.S. can and should be doing a lot better when it comes to babies.

And with major funding cuts to Medicaid and SNAP looming — programs which help to meet the basic needs of America’s youngest population and make up about half of all federal spending on babies — the next few years are only expected to be worse. 

“All the research shows this is the best investment you can possibly make for any age group, and yet we shortchange it,” said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus and one of the report’s authors. “We make far fewer investments for kids — but particularly babies and toddlers — than we actually should be making.”

Is there a magic number of dollars to invest in young children? In an interview, Lesley and his co-authors said no. But they did note that while the world’s largest economy spends $1.59 out of every $100 on babies, it spends about $13 on defense.

Lesley also pointed out that children from birth to age 3 make up about of the U.S. population, meaning federal spending on them is not even half of their population share. And some would argue that infants and toddlers, being an especially vulnerable, wholly dependent group, warrant more than their fair share of spending. 

“Many things about human infants and toddlers are expensive,” said Elizabeth Gaines, founder and CEO of Children’s Funding Project, a nonprofit that works with states, communities and Native nations to support and expand funding for children. “They’re vulnerable creatures. We should be spending more of our resources on the most vulnerable of us.”

Many countries have better infrastructure for supporting children and families than the U.S. does, said Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at Zero to Three, a national nonprofit advocating for infants and toddlers. Most have paid family and medical leave and universal health care systems, which the United States does not provide. That leaves many populations, including the youngest, to fend for themselves. 

“It’s paltry,” Boteach said of federal investment. “Babies are 100% of the future. They’re in a period where their brain development is so rapid, the investments have such a long-term impact, and yet we continue to underinvest in babies.”

While overall spending on babies is down about 20% over the past four years, discretionary spending has fared even worse. Since 2021, investment in programs that support child care, early learning, environmental safety and health for babies has declined by more than half — from 2.05% in 2021 to 0.96% in 2025. 

Many of these programs received historic levels of funding in 2021 as part of the , in response to the pandemic, making it an outlier year, acknowledged Chris Becker, vice president of budget policy and data analysis at First Focus and an author of the report. As a result of all that spending, he said, the child poverty rate in the U.S. was , lifting nearly 3 million children out of poverty and illustrating what could be possible if the nation invested more in its youngest citizens. 

“Child poverty exists. Food insecurity exists for babies. Homelessness exists for babies,” Becker said. “I don’t know what number solves that, but it is solvable.”

H.R. 1, also referred to as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in July 2025, may only increase the child poverty rate in the country, the authors of the Babies in the Budget report said. The legislation includes an estimated $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, which will gut the largest sources of federal spending on children from birth to 3. It will then be up to individual states to decide whether to make up the cost difference in those programs or let benefits lapse.

Trump has cast himself as a “” president, promoting rhetoric about boosting birth rates and supporting parents — a message by Vice President JD Vance and other allies. But the legislation tells a different story: Federal investment in babies and toddlers remains limited, and the largest funding streams for young children face steep cuts.

“I don’t even like to think about what is going to come from SNAP and Medicaid cuts,” said Gaines of Children’s Funding Project. “Kids in states that step up may end up being OK. Kids from states that largely voted this administration into office may not be OK.”

The president’s — though not in any way binding and merely used as a blueprint so Congress can see what the administration wants to prioritize — included program and funding cuts across the board, said Becker of First Focus. But “babies are hit especially hard,” he said, with proposed elimination of dozens of programs serving babies and a reduction of more than $2.5 billion in discretionary spending.

There is a dichotomy between the administration’s words and actions on children and families, added Boteach. 

“Budgets are moral documents,” she said. “Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what your priorities are. You can say your priorities are whatever you want, but the words are empty if they’re not reflected back in a document that actually puts resources into what you say your priorities are.”

Some leaders in the Trump administration have argued these programs for children are too costly, but Gaines doesn’t accept that as an answer.

“The resources are there. This is a nation of abundance,” said Gaines. “When people say the money is not there — it clearly is. Choices are being made about where we invest our dollars publicly.”

To illustrate her point, she noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act included a expansion of immigrant detention facilities. In 2021, the federal government spent on child care relief, and it was transformative for the field, she said. 

“I think if we asked the public whether they want their money on ICE detention centers or child care centers,” Gaines added, “they’d say child care centers.”

A third of American workers now have access to some form of government-issued paid leave — the biggest share ever. 

The United States is one of only a handful of countries that doesn’t have a federal paid leave policy offering workers paid time off after the birth of a child or to seek medical care, for example, and access to unpaid leave is only about . In that dearth of federal action, states have moved ahead to pass since 2002, which now cover a third of the population. Ten of those were passed in the past decade, as support for paid leave ; three go into effect this year.

Some states’ paid family and medical leave programs expand beyond time off to care for a new baby or to get medical treatment. Last year, Colorado expanded its paid leave program to include an for parents of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. In Oregon, also qualify for paid leave. Connecticut offers paid leave if you’re serving as an .

According to research from the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit advocacy group, the 14 laws now cover 32 percent of private-sector workers, an estimated 46 million people. Of those covered, a third are women, a third are men and another third are parents. Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders have especially benefited — 55 percent have paid leave through their state programs, as do 41 percent of Latinx workers due to a concentration of these communities in states that have enacted programs. 

Paid leave laws are in 13 blue states and the District of Columbia: California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Maryland, Delaware and Minnesota.

Though other workers may receive paid leave from their employers, workers of color — and especially women of color — are less likely to be in jobs that offer any paid leave. That’s one of the reasons advocates have pointed to a state or federal system as an equalizer that could improve access. 

“All workers will at some point need paid leave, whether for their own health or to care for loved ones. But when access is not guaranteed, the workers least likely to have paid leave also tend to be those who are likely to face greater health and caregiving challenges and have fewer financial resources to fall back on,” the National Partnership for Women & Families noted in its report. 

Low-wage workers, , have to paid family and medical leave from their employers than do high-wage workers.

“This creates a double bind for low-wage workers who often can’t take off unpaid time because they lack savings or might lose their job if they do. This inequity especially impacts women who are more likely to be low-wage workers and at the same time do two-thirds of unpaid caregiving,” said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, a senior fellow at the National Partnership for Women & Families and one of the authors of the report. 

Large paid leave campaigns in six more states — Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia — could, if passed, bring the share of American workers covered to 44 percent, the national partnership estimated.

The most imminent of those is a proposal in Virginia. Last month, lawmakers in the Virginia House and Senate that are likely to be signed by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who called for passing a state program in her State of the Commonwealth speech this year. 

In Pennsylvania, lawmakers are hoping to reignite momentum behind a paid leave bill that has support. Lawmakers in and are also considering a bill this session. And both Nevada and New Mexico have come close: In Nevada, a paid leave bill passed in the legislature last year was by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and in New Mexico, a paid leave bill passed the House last year .

At the federal level, part of the momentum of the past decade has come from men — — pushing for more paid leave access. During the Biden administration, the United States got to passing a federal paid leave policy before it was removed from a spending bill. Now during the Trump administration, lawmakers made permanent a who voluntarily offer paid leave to certain employees. 

So while the issue does have bipartisan support, Republicans and Democrats remain at odds about what form a federal paid leave policy should take. At a , U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, a Pennsylvania Republican who has a newborn, said his wife is able to care for their daughter because of her company’s paid leave policy. 

“We know that this practice makes an important difference for many in our community. Unfortunately, paid family leave has been out of reach for millions of Americans who are hoping to grow their families,” he said. 

But while state bills are “encouraging,” Mackenzie said it is also “difficult for state administrators and private-sector benefits managers to navigate the patchwork of paid leave policies across different states. While one program may work in Maryland, Alabama likely has its own workforce challenges to manage. One state’s approach should not be forced upon another’s workforce, or vice versa.” 

For paid leave, he said, “there is no silver bullet solution.” 

Dawn Huckelbridge, the director of Paid Leave for All, a national advocacy organization pushing for federal paid family and medical leave, said she is “heartened to see there is bipartisan interest and dialogue” on the subject. 

But, she added, “there are states that will likely never pass paid leave, so as long as there isn’t a federal guarantee, this is going to create a system and have and have nots that will just continue to grow inequities.”

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of . .

Could those two trends be related? New research and surveys indicate yes.

In , Boston University economics Ph.D. candidate Abigail Dow finds that when child care prices increase, some American families decide to put off having more children, and many don’t have more children at all. 

Dow looked at child care prices across the country in a compiled and published by the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor with data from 2010 to 2022. 

She then isolated a “shock” to child care prices — an event, unrelated to something like a recession or a spike in inflation, that made the cost of care go either up or down. The shock she identified was that when states mandate smaller group sizes and/or lower child to staff ratios, child care prices rise, so she studied what happened to fertility decisions when states passed such regulations.

“My key takeaway is that child care costs are high in the U.S., and I do find they’re a barrier to having children,” Dow said. She found that a 10% increase in the price of child care for children from birth to 2 years old led to a 5.7% decrease in the birth rate among women aged 20 to 44. Her research also found that the price increase leads to women delaying when they have children: a 10% increase prompts women to push back their first birth by four months and to extend the time between a first and second child by half a month. Dow found that women’s decisions about whether to have second and third children were particularly hampered by high child care prices. 

The findings are strongest for women ages 30 or older. This is, Dow posits, because they have more to lose if they can’t get child care: they’ve invested more time and resources into their careers and likely earn more, making the cost of having to give up on work to care for more children in the absence of affordable child care higher. Younger women have less to lose by having a child and dropping out of the work force if child care can’t be secured.

The research is novel: while there have been studies in European countries which suggest that women rethink having children when child care prices rise, Dow knew that those situations may not be applicable to the U.S., where the government spends much less on child care, it’s a primarily private system, and there is no guarantee of paid family leave. “There wasn’t a robust empirical analysis of: How do child care prices affect fertility rates?” Dow said. 

Dow noted that child care prices aren’t the only factor dampening the country’s fertility rate — other research has found that things like housing and health care prices also make an impact. But it’s clear that the cost of raising children is top of mind for American parents when they’re thinking about the sizes of their families. In of 3,000 nationally representative respondents by YouGov, the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Deseret News released in November, a record share of participants — 71% — said that raising children is unaffordable, a 13 percentage point increase over 2024. That high cost of raising children was listed as the single most important reason survey respondents offered for why they’ve limited the children they either had or planned to have. That response was twice as prevalent as the next two reasons they gave — a lack of personal desire and a lack of a supportive partner — and for the first time in the survey’s 10-year history, it was the top reason respondents gave.

The survey also found that support for government resources aimed at parents through direct payments and better programs had increased since 2021, and opposition to such interventions was 10 percentage points lower. A majority favor universal day care, while just 18% oppose it. Survey respondents also supported increased tax credits for parents.

“If you think about, ‘What do I have to think about when I’m raising a family for those early years,’ child care is going to be front of mind,” Dow said.

The situation is poised to get worse for Americans considering whether and when to have children. Dow’s data only goes through 2022. Since then, the billions of dollars in pandemic-era federal relief for the child care sector has disappeared. In its wake, states like Arkansas and Indiana have cut back on support for the sector. Indiana stopped enrolling new children in its child care subsidy program, and the state has reduced reimbursement rates for providers, leading more than 100 providers to shutter. Arkansas has also cut provider reimbursement rates, put new subsidy applicants on a waitlist, and instituted new copays for parents who receive vouchers. More of the cost burden will now fall on parents in states that pull back.

Dow cautioned that her research shouldn’t be interpreted as an argument for relaxing regulations in order to bring child care costs down and boost births. “These regulations are really important for child health and safety,” she pointed out. “I’m absolutely not in the business of saying we should be making these regulations more lax purely to make child care more affordable for parents.” But, she said, her research makes it clear that parents, and particularly mothers, make decisions about whether to have children and how many to have based at least in part on whether they can afford child care. “Anything we can do to make child care more affordable seems important from a policy perspective,” she said. 

“We know what the causes were,” said Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs with the Casey Foundation, known for its , which evaluates child well-being and other measures in each state. “There were significant pandemic-era policies in place, notably, the Child Tax Credit, which was allowed to lapse. Rising costs have also had a significant impact,” she said. are also a factor. Families with workers in low-paying jobs are particularly vulnerable in the current economic conditions.

To make matters worse, cuts to Medicaid, the and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) , said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus Children.

“Children 0 to 3 years old,” Lesley added, “have the highest poverty rate of any age group.”

Measuring child poverty doesn’t involve checking children’s tax returns or bank accounts. Little kids don’t have those. It depends entirely on the financial circumstances of their household, and often their parents. The Casey Foundation, and most other institutions tracking child poverty use the , which counts government benefits to gain a broader view of well-being, rather than the , which relies principally on wages. 

Poverty has serious consequences for learning. “In this period when a young child’s brain is in a rapid period of development, poverty is an impediment to that development,” Boissiere explained. “It increases the risk of behavioral and emotional challenges both at home and in school. And it creates a long-term barrier to a child’s ability to reach their full potential.” 

She elaborated: “If you think of what poverty means for a child, it means I’m constantly worried that I’m going to have enough food to eat. I’m not sure where my next meal is coming from. I may not live in healthy housing conditions. And it’s difficult for a child to focus when those things are on their minds.”

Over the long term, she noted, “There’s a direct impact on the children, but there’s also a direct impact on communities, and ultimately there’s a direct impact on the long-term health of our economy, because children today are the workforce tomorrow.”

Against this troubling backdrop, three pathways have emerged in the fight against child poverty — though none alone can fill the gap left by federal cuts.

States Taking Action

“The federal government sets the policies,” explained Boissiere. “And states implement those policies. And so the implementation can have a direct effect on how kids and families are impacted.” She noted that states can also pass their own child tax credits and earned income tax credits. In New Mexico, for example, anti-poverty programs and policies like reduced child poverty by 19 percentage points between 2022 and 2024, according to the Casey Foundation.

Maryland is pioneering another way that states can help their youngest residents thrive with its . The program provides grants to community partners in regions throughout the state where child poverty rates are especially high. 

The initiative has $19 million in grant funding to 28 high-poverty communities in 12 counties. Two strategies make ENOUGH unique: intentionally listening to community organizations and allowing them to “quarterback” the efforts; and harnessing philanthropic capital through the which is boosting the public funds, with $100 million committed for the next six years.

The investments include high-quality child care and education programs in South End, a community in , and , a cross-sector partnership in south Baltimore aimed to bolster education, community wellness, housing and economic health. as “a promising example for how other states can work across silos, enact evidence-based policies, and partner with local communities to reduce child poverty.

Gov. Wes Moore acknowledged the policy headwinds at a recent event kicking off ENOUGH’s second year, in which residents, officials and nonprofit leaders gathered in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood to hear about the initiative’s progress. Moore condemned recent federal budget cuts as “the single largest rollback of poverty-fighting programs in modern history.” 

He continued: “Now, at a time when the federal government is effectively telling communities of color and children living in poverty, ‘You’re on your own,’ Maryland is stepping up and doubling down. ENOUGH is about making government work better for the people it serves and ensuring that Maryland’s decade is written by our communities, not simply for them.”

Addressing a group of reporters after his remarks at the event, Moore recalled his service as CEO of New York’s Robin Hood Foundation. “I ran one of the largest data-driven poverty-fighting organizations in the country. We led with data, and that’s really the same type of mantra that we have here.” 

Philanthropy Filling Gaps

Like state and city governments, foundations and philanthropists can play a role in reducing the harm caused by cuts to programs that support working families, but cannot make up for the gaps in federal funding. There are a number of prominent grantmakers focused on child poverty, including the William T. Grant Foundation, the Ballmer Group, W.K. Kellogg Foundation — and their efforts to address a range of issues including early education, child welfare, racial equity, housing and family economic security make a difference. Giving USA, which tracks charitable giving, that nearly $180 billion of the $592.5 billion donated in 2024 went to human services and education. Much of that went to organizations helping children in the United States, though the categories extend beyond this population.

Reflecting on the present moment, Boissiere described the Casey Foundation’s approach: “We do our part to support the ecosystem, both in terms of supporting local organizations, but also making sure that public resources are available and that decision makers have access to data to try to help inform smart choices on behalf of kids.” 

Even if donors step up their giving significantly, nobody expects the generosity to come close to making up for — not even the recently announced from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The gift is designed to put $250 into the so-called Trump accounts of 25 million children living in ZIP codes where the median family income is below $150,000. Because account holders cannot make withdrawals from the accounts until they are 18, however, the program does not directly influence the child poverty rate today.

Advocates Pushing for Change

The nationwide advocacy community — which also includes organizations like the , , , , the — isn’t giving up on pushing for the federal programs that have been proven to lift families and children out of poverty.

Recommendations from the include rental assistance to reach more people who struggle to afford housing and expanding the Child Tax Credit for the who don’t get the full credit because their families’ incomes are too low.

To this list, Lesley from First Focus adds making SNAP more generous for families with young children, when parents may be earning less because they are . He also said administered by Social Security for children who have experienced the death of a parent should be automatic, rather than requiring an application process.

In a , Lesley argued that advocates should prioritize children over families. The family-first frame, he writes, “has ignored the power of empathy and the perceived deservingness of children, muted the moral urgency of our arguments and made children invisible in policy discussions. It arguably has led to fewer resources for children and families alike.” Pointing to a , Lesley underscored that children are a winning issue with voters.

Real changes result from states directing resources toward solutions, foundations increasing their grantmaking, and advocacy organizations analyzing data and taking steps to build awareness or prompt policy change. But that may not be enough to support the sustained structural transformation necessary to conquer child poverty.

That day marks an important shift for her and other early care and education providers in Nebraska who serve low-income families. On that date, the state intended to begin paying providers a consistent rate for families who use government subsidies to pay for child care. 

Instead of reimbursing providers based on children’s attendance — which can vary wildly, especially this time of year, based on factors like illness and family travel — Nebraska would pay providers the same amount each month based on enrollment. 

Last year, because of the change expected to come in summer 2026, Hampson, who owns a home-based child care program in Lincoln, Nebraska, felt comfortable filling more of her program slots with children whose families pay with subsidies. Today, she does not have one private-paying family. She made the shift assuming the enrollment-based pay would insulate her from the instability that often accompanies subsidy slots. 

“I was super excited to know more of these families were going to get that quality, consistent care,” Hampson said, adding that reaching more low-income families is important in the field. “It’s not that providers don’t want to.”

Now, though, that could all be about to change. 

Nebraska’s transition to enrollment-based pay was part of an effort to get in compliance with a rule . Enrollment-based payments, that administration believed, would create greater predictability for providers, allowing them to serve more low-income families who need child care and, eventually, could entice more providers to participate in the subsidy program. 

The rule was one of a handful of changes made by the prior administration related to the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), the primary federal program that states use to provide financial assistance to low-income families in need of child care. Other shifts include paying providers up front for child care, rather than reimbursing them the following month, and encouraging the use of grants and contracts with providers. timelines for implementing these changes have varied. As of September 2025, 24 states were paying based on enrollment, according to an by New America. For the others, the latest deadline granted was Aug. 1, 2026. 

Just this week, however, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), that it would seek to rescind many of the 2024 rules, returning these issues to states. 

The cannot be enforced right away. Under federal law, the agency is required to take public comments, review them, and use that input to make final decisions, noted Alex Adams, who leads ACF. He declined to give a timeline for any changes to take effect.

If approved, the changes would not “make any net new policy decisions,” he added. “It simply goes back to where we were prior to 2024 regulations.”

The administration wants to rescind the 2024 rules, he said, because all 50 states had requested waivers related to some or all of these rules due to budget constraints and other implementation challenges.Ěý

“Any time 50 states are asking for a waiver from something,” Adams said, “it suggests to me that maybe the rule isn’t working as intended.”

He also noted that “attendance-verified payment,” rather than enrollment-based, “is more of a deterrent to fraud.” Leaders in the Trump administration are concerned about programs with “phantom attendance” — suggesting they receive government payments but don’t actually serve the children they say they do — Adams said, but he declined to share specifics of ongoing investigations. 

Many early care and education advocates and policy experts have that rampant fraud and abuse is going unchecked. 

Casey Peeks, senior director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, called the allegations “unfounded” and worried that they would undo real progress made in the field in recent years. 

“It is very unhelpful and destabilizing to the sector, in the immediate- and long-term, to take some of these most foundational levers we have to stabilize the sector and claim that they result in fraud,” Peeks said.

Upon hearing the news this week, Hampson said she’s had to remind herself to “just breathe.” She knew she was taking a risk by enrolling 100% of families on subsidies.

Now, she said, she will have to rearrange her budget to continue to serve all of those families. Under an attendance-based pay structure, her income is just that much more volatile.

In December, for example, between holidays, vacation time and children’s absences, Hampson was only able to bill the state for 18 child care days. If the children in her program were from private-paying families, she would have been paid for 23 days, she said. 

But Hampson’s operational costs didn’t see a material decrease in December. 

“Without a provider being at fault at all, they could be at 50% attendance one day just because the flu is going around. That shouldn’t harm their bottom line,” Peeks said. 

“It’s really unpredictable and unfair for the provider,” she added. “Just because attendance is down doesn’t mean operation costs go down.”

In West Virginia, where providers have been paid based on enrollment since 2020, Katelyn Vandal emphasized how critical the change has been to keeping her rural, center-based program open. 

“Our mortgage payment doesn’t cost less because two kids in the classroom have the flu,” noted Vandal, director of A Place to Grow, a child care center in Oak Hill, West Virginia. Nor does her electricity bill and a host of other overhead costs. 

If her state returns to attendance-based pay, she’s not sure A Place to Grow would be able to continue operating. The center serves about 100 kids, with 60% from families that pay with subsidies. 

“We run such a fine budget line anyway that if, six months from now, we were going back to attendance, we would be looking at closing,” she said. “We would not survive transitioning back to that.”

Sheryl Hutzenbiler, owner of Munchkin Land Daycare in Billings, Montana, said she suspects that, under attendance-based pay, providers will either raise tuition rates on families — many of whom are already paying the maximum they can afford without one parent leaving the workforce — or, like Vandal, be forced to close their doors. 

But that is not a decision Hutzenbiler will have to face, should the Trump administration successfully restore attendance-based pay. Since she lives in Montana, where enrollment-based pay became in 2023, she and other providers in the state are protected from policy fluctuations at the federal level. 

That’s true for a , which have either passed laws protecting enrollment-based pay or have continued paying based on enrollment, on a temporary basis, since the pandemic. (West Virginia is in the latter category.)

Enrollment-based pay has been pivotal for Hutzenbiler, whose home-based program consists of about 60% of families who pay with subsidies. Back when she was paid based on attendance, she said her first sacrifice during low-attendance months would be her own wages. She would pay her full-time teacher first and make sure program costs were covered, often leaving nothing for herself and relying on her husband’s income instead. With the consistent subsidy income each month, though, she’s not only been able to avoid missed paychecks for herself, she’s been able to add two part-time workers to the payroll. 

Hampson, in Nebraska, said she was part of a group last year advocating for the state to pass around enrollment-based pay. It was ultimately unsuccessful.

“We wanted to know our state had already said yes, so we wouldn’t go backwards,” she said. “And here we are going backwards.”

In an industry where profit margins are at less than 1%, these changes will inevitably leave providers who participate in the subsidy program with less revenue to survive on. The shifts will likely also deter providers who participate in the subsidy program, or who might have considered participating, from doing so in the future, said Peeks. This will likely, in effect, leave low-income families with fewer choices about where to go for child care. 

“When you’re stabilizing providers overall, you’re often creating more options for families overall,” said Peeks. “I think it could definitely have a chilling effect.”

Keeping to this ambitious timeline has depended on more than picking a location and making sure the facility meets regulatory standards. The initiative’s success depends on building a strong, sustainable workforce. It’s not just finding talented, certified early educators and getting them to show up on opening day, but creating a plan to retain them year over year. 

In light of an uncertain economy and a number of systemic factors, achieving this goal may be easier said than done. “We recognize many organizations have experienced challenges in attracting educators. Fewer people are entering the field, which makes it even more important to invest in developing and supporting those who choose this career,” said Beth Kroutch, human resources director for Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning. 

With three centers already open and three set to open by fall 2027, Kroutch stressed the importance of planning ahead and forging partnerships. One approach her team has taken, she said, “is to reach out proactively to local colleges and universities in advance to talk about our organization, engage in a partnership and make a connection that hopefully shows benefits to both parties.” In addition to developing partnerships with local higher education institutions, the Catherine Hershey Schools have an internship program for high school students that offers a pathway to employment. She also described other recruitment strategies such as social media and career fairs. 

Kroutch is right. Other early learning leaders are feeling the pain, too. “I spend most of my waking hours contemplating this topic,” said Rhian Allvin, founder of , a network of three centers — two in northern Virginia and one in Washington, D.C. It was never easy to attract talent to a profession with low wages, poor or nonexistent benefits and minimal opportunities for career advancement. And it’s a challenge to keep early educators in the field. Physical demands, long hours and emotional stress of the work all contribute to a in early childhood education.

A dramatic intensification of immigration enforcement has exacerbated these challenges. A considerable segment of the early care and education workforce are immigrants — at least 21% nationwide, according to published by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley. With the of protections limiting federal immigration arrests around sensitive sites, about immigration raids on schools and child care programs have escalated and many providers are faced with difficult decisions like .

Felicia Jones Taylor, co-founder of , a consultancy that provides technical assistance to child care centers, underscored the impact of immigration policies on early educators. “Immigrants came from their countries with transferable skills. They have experience working with children, but there are barriers preventing them from participating in this workforce,” she said. 

More than other workplaces, child care centers are protective communities that support kids and families, said Lauren Hogan, managing director of policy and professional advancement at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). When educators are afraid, it affects the whole community.

Amid major workforce challenges, developing creative approaches to recruiting and retaining qualified child care staff has become increasingly important, early learning leaders said. Wages came up again and again as the most powerful recruitment tool. The child care , which is predominantly female and often women of color, has long endured . Unless and until things change, compensation will remain a leading reason why it’s hard to attract new talent, and why some experienced providers for higher-paying jobs. Caitlin McLean, a senior research specialist at CSCCE, summarized the problem: “You’ve invested that money in training people to work with kids and who probably would like to work with kids, but they end up leaving.” While the profession is rewarding, she noted, it is also demanding, and the supports that might keep them on the job aren’t always readily available.

of child care providers are considering leaving the workforce. that increasing pay reduces turnover and some programs have raised wages. The , a child care program that arose in Austin, Texas, in 2018, with a drop-in care model to offer flexibility for families, pays its educators $28 per hour, according to the center’s founder Choquette Hamilton. That’s nearly twice , according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. To make this level of compensation possible, Hamilton said the center uses a braided funding model including support from the city of Austin’s . 

The choice to prioritize compensation was intentional. “That rate was a decision from the beginning,” said Hamilton. “The educators do feel respected and valued. All of our recruitment has come from word of mouth, so they definitely tell their friends, but sadly, it still isn’t enough, because the work is not full-time at that rate.” She explained that many of their educators work part time and are gig workers who piece together their livelihoods working multiple jobs. 

While compensation is key, leaders said a thoughtful recruitment and retention strategy goes beyond the paycheck. “There are lots of ways that directors demonstrate, in partnership with the families, just how much they really appreciate the work that the early childhood educators are doing,” explained NAEYC’s Hogan. She cited Children’s Village, a nonprofit preschool in Philadelphia, as an example of a program illustrating that appreciation by for employees including health care, vacation, sick leave and a retirement plan. “Most of our educators do not have access to that,” she said. “That demonstrates caring for them in a real way, thinking about their long-term well-being.” Hogan also pointed to the for child care workers to access child care for their own children, and said, “It has definitely had an impact on recruitment and retention, helping staff come in and stay and feel supported.” 

In addition to improving working conditions and pulling levers that make the field more hospitable, building a robust pipeline of candidates is also crucial. Keeping a full staff in place often means recruiting more people than you think you might need, but even in the rare instances when a child care program is able to offer and sustain higher pay and good benefits for employees, there are other factors that make it hard to hire and keep employees. Candidates are juggling personal and professional stressors that often shape their decisions. 

Allvin described frequent instances in which an educator will get through the screening part of the hiring process at Brynmor, but fail to show up for the interview. “We don’t ever hear from them again,” she says. “It happens all the time.” 

One point all leaders were sure to make is that community is key to retention, but building it takes time. The first year is critical, leaders said. Once staff see the investment, culture and support, they’re more likely to stay long term.

“You lose people mostly within the first six months,” said Allvin. Keeping the turnover rate under 20% per year has been a steady challenge. She expressed relief that after two years at her flagship site in Lorton, Virginia, the center finally has no openings to fill.

Kroutch said that because there are a number of Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning, her team has been able to show potential staff members for new locations what the culture is like by inviting them to open house events at existing sites. Meeting candidates in person is important, Kroutch said. It’s a first step in building community. 

In the face of staffing challenges, many child care professionals who are responsible for hiring and maintaining staff, have adopted an all-of-the-above approach, and have maintained optimism in spite of the odds. “Just because the system is broken,” Hogan mused, “does not mean that it is beyond fixing.” 

A video illustrates a cartoon Brachiosaurus trudging along. The dinosaur has bright colors and a friendly voice carefully designed to draw the attention of a toddler. As the green leaf-eater goes to speak, a banner ad floats across the screen.

Experts caution that this experience can distract the child. “There’s advertising embedded into the video, or at the bottom of the video, or the side,” said Kaitlin Tiches, a medical librarian at Boston Children Hospital’s Digital Wellness Lab. That can be especially problematic if the ad isn’t developmentally appropriate for the viewer. 

The tough choice about whether to allow babies and children to consume content online is nothing new. Neither is that comes with it for many parents who opt to allow their little ones to access digital media, from the American Academy of Pediatrics that suggests to avoid it for babies under 18-months-old and to limit it for kids under age 5.

At a time when kids are gaining access to digital devices earlier — many of them as infants or toddlers — and cuts to public broadcasting have put an end to many of the high-quality programs American children have been raised on for generations, the decision has become more complicated.

, which comes with its own unique blend of allure for parents and children has become a staple in many homes. The streaming site is seeing a surge in popularity, especially among families with children under 2, even though child development experts have expressed about the use of the platform for young children.

According to a recent published by Pew Research Center, 62% of toddlers ages 2 and under watch YouTube, a significant spike from the 45% reported in 2020. There was also an uptick in toddlers who watched YouTube daily, rising from 24% in 2020 to 35% in 2025. 

“I think it’s a very striking rise,” said Colleen McClain, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. “It’s a great example of a theme from our report, which is that tech starts young.” 

What to Know Before Letting Kids Hit Play on YouTube

The YouTube boost arrives as concerns continue to swirl about the site. Tiches warned of unfettered advertising and the company’s focus on profit over education. She pointed out that traditional children’s media has clear parameters around advertising  — the episode plays, then cuts to commercial break. But on YouTube, prevalent banner ads appear throughout the screen, with other ads interjecting in the middle of an episode. That children’s learning. 

“I think because YouTube creators are monetized, there’s a lot of pressure to successfully create videos, and with the young children on these platforms, it’s a big market,” Tiches said. “Ads might be very long and again, if parents are not watching with their children, then the children might not know how to skip them. Then, it’s minutes of an ad that may not be appropriate for very young children.”

While creators can mark whether their video is child-friendly, the ads — and videos themselves — may not be developmentally appropriate. A found that only 19% of the videos infants and toddlers watched on YouTube were age appropriate. That report was based on data about young kids and YouTube by Common Sense Media, which revealed that roughly one-fifth of advertisements contained age-inappropriate content including violence, drugs and sexual content. About one-quarter of ads were child-appropriate, with most (74%) deemed “neutral,” for companies like Volvo, State Farm Insurance and Casper Sleep Inc.Ěý

But even those can influence children on consumerism, which may not be the intended point of watching content. 

Curation and quality control are important, experts said. Shortly after the Common Sense report came out, its lead author, Jenny Radesky, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Michigan , “YouTube is kids’ favorite playground right now.” She added: “We have to ask whether it’s being maintained in the right ways, if the equipment is safe and giving kids freedom to explore and have positive experiences? Or are they being steered towards experiences that benefit marketers and brands, but don’t support their developmental growth?”

Many entities, such as PBS, have their for children’s programming, thanks to the , a law that requires broadcast television to air a dedicated amount of educational content and limited advertising during children’s programs. Streaming services like YouTube do not have to adhere to those rules. YouTube’s asks publishing for a primary audience of children to mark their content as “Made for Kids” and to ensure they’re “complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other applicable laws.” 

“The content I’m viewing on Netflix or Disney has been selected by that company; if they say it’s child-focused, depending on the company, I can have a little more reasonable awareness or trust,” said Kate Blocker, director of research and programs at Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. 

“I could post a video and say it’s educational, but what does it mean?” Tiches added. “There’s not necessarily a lot of oversight into what is considered truly educational, or [ensuring] the value of it is rooted in early education practices.” 

Blocker said some parents, while well aware of issues on social media sites, may view YouTube as a separate entity akin to watching traditional television or a streaming service. But Blocker points out the platform more closely mimics the former, with the ability to comment on videos, have an auto-play feature and deliver suggested content driven by algorithms. 

“There’s a lot of national dialogue and awareness building around social media and its particular harms, but generally speaking I don’t think people connect that thought to YouTube,” she said. “They’re thinking of Instagram and TikToks and teens  — [but] not making the same connection to the content on YouTube.” 

Some parents are somewhat cognizant of limiting their children’s screen time, at the very least. According to the Pew report, roughly one-quarter of parents said that they believe they can “do more” to limit their toddler’s screen time access. As the child gets older, that share becomes almost half: 47% of parents believe they can do better limiting their 8- to 12-year-old’s screen time. 

“I have a 3-year-old, and we don’t let her use a phone or tablet or anything,” one parent said in a focus group conducted by Pew in March. The parent added that they let their 3 year old use a laptop for a week’s subscription to an educational platform. “It got me thinking there probably are opportunities to use technology as an educational tool … but I’m so scared about the consequences … that I’m probably hesitant to use it at all.”

The Pew report highlighted that children found YouTube content educational and entertaining, but the research did not delve into why parents turn toward the platform. The screen time, Pew’s McClain said, could be driven, in part, by parents simply battling with high stress levels. 

“From qualitative research, we’re hearing more and more that it’s really hard; parents are struggling,” Blocker said. “Sometimes you need something to keep your little one still, to do the dishes or help your older one with homework.” 

Some may turn toward YouTube because of its easy accessibility across various devices. Others may be drawn to its free model at a time when the cost of cable subscriptions and streaming service continue to rise. And with funding for public media — most notably PBS — in recent months, families are left with less reliable options for high-quality children’s programming.  

“Regardless of the platform, it can feel overwhelming,” Tiches said. But families might  have an easier time figuring out whether programs on a more traditional network, like PBS, have had input from educational or developmental experts, versus on YouTube, where parents have to search for information about the creator, Tiches added.

How Parents Can Help Kids Stream Smarter

Experts acknowledge that it is not feasible to expect parents to avoid screen time entirely. from The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages use of screens for babies under 18 months old and recommends that parents who want to introduce digital media to their 18- to 24-months old toddlers do so by co-viewing high-quality programs. According to the Pew report, most of them are: 74% of parents of kids age 12 and under watch YouTube with their children, and more than 90% of parents of kids 5 and under do. 

“I think it speaks to the way parents are navigating all this technology for their kids,” McClain said. “Parents are really navigating these decisions on a daily basis, dealing with a lot of emotions around them and trying to do the best for their kids.” 

If watching together is not possible, Blocker suggests that having the content on a large screen — not a small screen plugged in with headphones — is preferred, so the parent is still able to hear the content. 

Tiches added that parents can look into who is making the content their children are consuming, and at the very least, should look at the type of content that it is. If a video is fast-paced, consider finding something more calming, especially for kids under 2.  

“You can tell sometimes from the title if there are shapes, colors, numbers, letters … that’s going to be a lot of information, but probably not as beneficially educational,” she said. “Versus really focusing on circles, for example, or words that start with the letter ‘A.’”

Beyond what parents can do though, there is a push for more legislation from both the federal government and technology companies. 

“Parents don’t want to do this alone,” McClain said. “One of the things that stand out in our work is [that] parents are people: they work, they struggle with their own screen time. And that, combined with [the fact that] they want technology companies to do more, really paints a picture.”

Meanwhile, families — especially families of color and low-income families — are left to hold their breath and wonder what this shutdown means for them. As members of Congress keep making their rounds on television, babies still need formula, toddlers still need , children still need breakfast and lunch at school and in their child care programs, and parents still need child care so they can work. Amid extreme stress, families are left, wondering how they will be able to take care of their children.

The demands of children and their families do not stop just because Congress is at a standstill. 

According to , an annual report published by the Urban Institute about federal expenditures, children received only about 9% of all federal spending in 2023, while about 43% of federal spending went toward health and retirement benefits for adults 18 years and older. That’s a very small percentage for a nation in which politicians on have expressed interest in increased government investment in children. These numbers contradict the narrative that claims children matter because they are our future.

That 9% starts to feel even smaller during a government shutdown. Some programs, like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, are mandatory, meaning they don’t require annual congressional approval. But others, including a number of crucial children’s programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), are funded through the annual appropriations process, which Congress must approve. This means when lawmakers can’t agree on a budget, these critical programs are left in limbo.

The fallout on the horizon from this needless dysfunction is becoming clearer.

, the National WIC Association reminded the public that WIC only had enough funds to temporarily remain open during a government shutdown. Now, according to Reuters, at least two dozen state websites warn there could be an for more than 41 million people in America who get aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the nearly 7 million people . 

Georgia Machell, president and chief executive officer of the National WIC Association, delivered this sobering news week.

“Without additional support, State WIC Agencies face another looming crisis,” she said. “Several are set to run out of funds to pay for WIC benefits on November 1 and may need to start making contingency plans.”

Many families in historically marginalized communities, who already face greater barriers to health care, housing and early education, will feel this impact even more sharply. For example, we know that tens of thousands of young children and families rely on vital support received through Head Start, a service that promotes early learning and development, health and well-being. The shutdown is already in its fourth week, and, according to a issued on Oct. 16 from the National Head Start Association, if the government shutdown doesn’t end by Nov. 1, more than 65,000 children and families will be at risk of losing critical services. 

A missed doctor’s appointment, a delay in SNAP benefits or a gap in child care isn’t just inconvenient. It can destabilize a family and hinder a child’s development, especially in the classroom.

A research brief by The Food Research & Action Center highlighted the links between hunger and learning, stating that “behavioral, emotional, mental health, and academic problems are more prevalent among children and adolescents struggling with hunger” and that young people experiencing hunger have lower math scores and poorer grades. The shutdown will have real and lasting consequences on the learning, development and well-being of America’s children because these programs are being impacted.

It’s frustrating to watch lawmakers stand at podiums and declare how much they care about children while their actions — or inaction — puts children at risk. 

Words don’t put food on the table. Words don’t pay rent. But actions do. 

And right now, the actions coming out of Congress are sending an unfortunate message to families: protecting children is not the priority.

If children truly are our future, then they cannot be treated as bargaining chips. Children deserve more than 9% of America’s federal spending budget. We need federal budgets that reflect children’s needs and protection for essential services. Critical programs that protect child health and well-being should never be disrupted by a government shutdown.

Finally, Americans deserve government accountability. Policymakers should be held responsible for their words and actions, especially when they fail to deliver on the promises they make about protecting children.

Children cannot wait. They are growing, learning and developing right now. The choices we make as a country today will shape their tomorrow.

April Perez was 22 years old when she had her first daughter. Enrolling in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, commonly known as WIC, was a lifesaver. “With her being my first child,” she said, “I was still finding my way through motherhood.” The program helped her access healthy foods for her family, get formula when she wasn’t able to produce enough breastmilk to breastfeed her daughter, and even get a referral to sign up her daughter, now 4 years old, for health insurance.

WIC provides food, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and health care referrals to low-income mothers and young children ages 5 and under. Perez said the benefits for formula and foods like milk, fruit and vegetables alleviated some of the financial pressure around her transition to motherhood. “I didn’t have to stress about whether I was going to feed her or not,” she said. The benefits also made it possible for Perez and her husband to save up for their own apartment and move out of the friend’s house they were staying in. 

Perez’s husband works long days in construction, but she doesn’t work due to a number of health issues. She has cerebral palsy, which makes it hard for her to stand, use her arms and hands, or sometimes even walk, and hydrocephalus. WIC benefits help keep her family afloat. Perez, who lives in Virginia, now has two more daughters, a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old, and all three of her children are enrolled in WIC. Her 3-year-old, who has been diagnosed with autism, is very particular about food given her sensory sensitivities, but Perez is able to get her plenty of milk, bananas and other foods she likes with her WIC benefits. “It gives me peace of mind for my kid,” she said. Her infant, meanwhile, needs a special formula because she has acid reflux, which she said would cost her $50 if she didn’t get it through WIC.

But the government shutdown has now put the WIC program at risk. Unlike Social Security, WIC isn’t an entitlement program, so it relies on Congress to appropriate money every year, but Congress wasn’t able to pass bills funding the government before the fiscal year lapsed on September 30. The program is on funds, operating mostly on a contingency fund of , which is , as the shutdown continues. 

Federal funds would likely have lasted just two weeks from the start of the shutdown, estimated Zoë Neuberger, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Then on Oct. 7, the Trump administration it had found a “creative solution” to use tariff revenue to keep federal WIC funding flowing. In a briefing for Congressional staffers three days later, the administration said it would about $300 million in unused tariff revenue into WIC, allowing it to continue until the end of October.

After federal funding is gone, states will have to use their own money if they want to keep the program going and try to get the federal government to pay them back when it reopens. The administration recently sent states an email saying that if they use their own funds for WIC allowable purposes they may be reimbursed, according to Neuberger and the National WIC Association. But “there isn’t a guarantee” of reimbursement, Neuberger noted, and “it would be helpful to have assurances.” 

States have used their funds to keep WIC going in past shutdowns, and some plan to do so now. Colorado lawmakers a bill to fund the program for a month in the event of a shutdown, and the governors of and Montana have that they’ll keep their programs running for the near term. But not every state currently has that capacity.

While Mississippi not to disrupt benefits for current recipients, the state has suspended enrolling new ones. The Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada WIC, which serves Nevada’s Native tribes and is open to all of the state’s residents, announced that it would benefits starting on Oct. 9, but then unspent federal recovery funds that allowed it to stay open through the end of October. Similarly, Washington state officials they don’t have the money to keep WIC open, but also federal funding on Oct. 9 that allows the state program to keep operating through the end of the month. If the shutdown drags on longer than that, states in similar situations will either have to stop enrolling new families to stretch their funds or risk having to cut off benefits entirely.

Losing benefits would be devastating for parents like Ashely Gooden-Stewart, a mother of three from Texas. She first enrolled in WIC in 2014, when her first baby, who died as an infant, was born. She enrolled when each of her other children were born and is currently receiving benefits for her 1-year-old. Gooden-Stewart works remotely on a contract basis, but the work is seasonal and spotty. She said she doesn’t have any current projects and doesn’t expect to before the end of the month, but in order to get a full-time job she needs child care, which she cannot afford. 

WIC helps fill in the gaps. “Eggs is expensive, milk is expensive, life is expensive,” Gooden-Stewart said. Her family relies on getting those staples through the program. If these benefits dry up, “We would have to go with less,” she said. 

The educational aspects of WIC are also very valuable to her. She said the breastfeeding classes are “incredible” and the classes on child development milestones, which she currently attends, have been very useful. “Although I’ve been a mother for years, it’s different each time,” she said. She loves the cooking classes that are offered, which help her discover more ways to incorporate vegetables into her family’s meals. “It helps our family eat healthier,” she said, adding that losing access to these classes would be “detrimental.” 

The uncertainty of the shutdown itself may be disrupting benefits for some people by making them hesitate to enroll. “Just the news about a shutdown or WIC possibly being affected leads people to not get benefits that they need,” Neuberger noted. And even after the government eventually reopens, WIC’s future remains uncertain. The program still has to be funded for the next year, and it’s unclear if it will get enough money to keep operating as it has been. In his , President Trump called for a significant cut to WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefits, which would between 62% to 75% for 5.2 million participants, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities (CBPP). 

Although the Republican-led House proposed a smaller cut to the fruit and vegetable benefits in its latest appropriations bill, the proposal still calls for a reduction and doesn’t include enough funding to keep serving everyone that is likely to enroll over the next year. Under the proposal, recipients would see a reduction in their food benefits and states would have to turn away nearly a half million eligible families, according to a . The Senate Agriculture Appropriations , by contrast, fully funds WIC. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have a bill that would make WIC a mandatory program, sparing it from running out of money during a government shutdown or if enrollment surges more than expected.

There is also that if an agreement to reopen the government doesn’t include guardrails that ensure that the Trump administration actually spends the money Congress appropriates as is the law, WIC could be cut through measures the administration to withhold funding for other programs, such as impoundment and rescission. With higher enrollment from eligible families and rising food costs, WIC is in need of more funding than in past years to continue serving all eligible participants who enroll.

If WIC benefits are disrupted, Perez’s family will feel the impact immediately. “It scares me,” Perez said. Her family receives food stamps, but with food prices so high, “it only lasts me for one week,” she said. Perez knows she can’t work, and she doesn’t have child care, but she said that if WIC funding runs short in the shutdown, she might be forced to find some kind of job to make ends meet. The only alternative would be for her husband, who already works from 6 a.m. into the evening, to get a second job during night hours. She worries about how that would impact her children, especially her daughter with autism who doesn’t do well with change.

They might even have to move. Perez fears that if their WIC benefits are interrupted, her family may not be able to afford their monthly rent of $1,650 on top of utilities, internet and car payments. 

Growing up, Perez said she watched her parents go without food so she and her siblings could eat. WIC benefits have meant she hasn’t yet had to do the same. But that will change if WIC’s food benefits disappear. “The thought of that happening — and me having to do that for my kids — that hurts,” she said. “The thought of having to worry about that is scary. I don’t want to have to worry about if I’m going to be able to feed my kids or not.”

“[If] I wasn’t able to take care of my kids like I want to,” Perez said, “that would really make me disappointed in this country.”

Yet as her 30th anniversary working as a special education teacher for the approaches, Lengen increasingly feels disillusioned: still happy in her work, but distraught about remaining in what may be the only profession in New York that hasn’t gotten a substantive raise — in absolute terms, much less adjusting for inflation — in three decades. Any modest rate increases the state’s early intervention providers (which include teachers like Lengen and a range of therapists) have benefited from, were generally counterbalanced by cuts. “As a 30-year veteran with a master’s degree, I am working twice as hard as when I started in early intervention, and making less now,” Lengen said.Ěý

Over the same time period, New York’s hourly minimum wage has , from $4.25 in the mid-’90s to more than $15 now. The average salary for public school teachers jumped from in the mid 1990s to about in 2023-24, according to the National Education Association. And, while New York state data is elusive, nationally the for chief executives climbed from nearly $6.4 million in 1995 to more than $20 million in recent years.

The Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould, who researches wages and economic inequality, said she knows of no precedent for a job where the absolute pay hasn’t risen in 30 years. “It’s a little hard to believe,” she said.

Early intervention providers deliver critical services including speech, physical and occupational therapy to children from birth through age 3 who have a range of developmental delays and disabilities. When done well and promptly, that it can reduce the need for costly special education services, as well as other public assistance down the road, and improve life outcomes. 

Early intervention systems are state-led and designed, and the mix of specific funding sources can vary considerably across states. New York relies on a combination of private insurance dollars and county, state and federal funding, including Medicaid, to serve approximately 70,000 children. 

Many of the therapists, special education teachers and others who provide early intervention services are not salaried employees. In New York, they are paid a fee for service rate that is set by the state. After providing the service, they submit a claim for reimbursement and are paid either by Medicaid if the child is eligible, or by the state, which draws from a combination of funding streams. 

For many services, including the specialized therapy and support that Lengen provides, that rate was higher in the 1990s when early intervention began in New York state, than it is today. For instance, a published by The Children’s Agenda, a Rochester-based group which has advocated for increased pay for providers over the years, found that a standard visit — at least 30 minutes — was reimbursed at a statewide average of $79 in 1994, compared to $69 in 2022. Brigit Hurley, chief program officer at the group, said that according to a recent staff analysis, “reimbursement rates would need to increase by 240% to have the same spending power as it did when the early intervention program began.”

People in the field say it’s typical for therapists, who all have at least a master’s degree, to earn between $50,000 and $70,000 a year — far less than they could make doing the same work in a different, often less stressful, setting.

“If you were a governor or a legislator and were stuck at your 1995 salary, would you stick around for that job?” said Amanda Wilbert, the regional director of Step by Step Pediatric Services in Rochester, an agency that coordinates early intervention services. Two of the young occupational therapists Wilbert oversees left earlier this year for jobs doing the same work in a nursing home. The positions came with an approximately $30,000 raise, bringing their pay from about $60,000 to $90,000, and better benefits, Wilbert said.

Partly because of that pay-induced exodus, advocates say that New York in terms of timely delivery of early intervention services to kids. In the spring of 2024, after a long, hard battle by advocacy groups, a pay boost appeared to be on the horizon. a 5% rate increase for in-person early intervention services, plus an additional 4% for those working in rural and underserved parts of the state. But so far, therapists have yet to see that bump, with final approval pending with the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (In late September, federal officials did approve the 4% for those working in underserved areas, but it’s unclear when it will be implemented, or how many providers it will reach.)

Meanwhile, with the Trump administration having recently slashed Medicaid by trillions of dollars, the long-delayed full increase might not get the federal stamp of approval for the indefinite future, according to advocates, and the system will likely continue to bleed providers. Said Lengen: “In the end these kids are losing out, and it’s a very vulnerable population.”

New York is hardly an anomaly. Other states — both red and blue — report similar challenges, including Texas, Rhode Island and Illinois. In Illinois, a 2024 into the finances and pay in early intervention found that the median annual income for independent contractors in the field was about $71,000, which is significantly lower than typical incomes for similar roles in the state. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wages for a speech and language pathologist in various settings in Illinois is about $88,000 and for physical therapists, it’s about $104,000. As in New York, that disparity has caused many early intervention professionals to leave the field, with the number of speech therapists in the program dropping 13% between 2018 and 2023, and physical therapists falling 16%, according to the 2024 report.

The problem is only likely to worsen nationally, said Elisabeth Burak, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families. States will struggle to raise rates for any service that’s funded partially through Medicaid, she said. 

No one knows exactly what the fallout from the Medicaid cuts will be, but untold numbers of families with children could be booted off the program. At the same time, the amount of money states get for Medicaid-eligible families could shrink, forcing state policymakers to make tough decisions about how to make up the losses. “States are already having a hard time but it has the potential to get a lot worse,” said Burak.

New York’s early intervention program was created in 1993 and it’s had a rocky history with compensation. The first significant rate decrease occurred in the late 1990s, according to the state compiled by The Children’s Agenda. Rates stayed the same for over a decade. And then , there were two cuts, said Brigit Hurley, chief program officer at the group.

A few years ago, in 2022, some providers in New York, including physical and speech therapists, . But that “didn’t bring the pay above when the program started,” said Hurley. And the across-the-board pay bump that the brought hope to many providers, but without final approval at the federal level for the 5% bump, they still haven’t seen the increase. 

“I’ve had providers tell me they are getting paid less now than when they graduated 30 years ago with a master’s degree,” said Hurley. “It’s a really dire situation.” 

Much — and on particularly bad days, most — of early intervention professionals’ work is uncompensated: travel time to homes; “no shows” when the families aren’t available; lesson planning and other preparation for the sessions; communication with families between visits; equipment and supplies; mandated annual continuing education sessions; extensive reporting that’s required on each case.

“This year and last year … I come home after seeing four to nine kids and I’m at the computer for two to three hours doing reports,” Lengen said. “With [26] kids on my caseload, that’s a lot of reports to do.”

Lengen, 62, graduated in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in special education and, a few years later, earned a master’s in reading. She worked for nearly a decade in K-12 classrooms, and then shifted to early intervention around the time the program debuted in New York in the 1990s. Initially, she worked for an agency and made a full-time salary. But she left the staff position in 2004 when the agency stopped providing early intervention services. “The pay was decent, but it was a big learning curve on my part,” she said.Ěý

Today, Lengen works in homes and child care programs, supporting kids and their caregivers, often coaching the latter on how to manage challenging behaviors. She also winds up filling gaps left by other holes in the intervention system, like supporting children with autism in their sensory development. “I end up doing a lot of sensory play since most of the kids don’t have occupational therapists — ,” she said. 

Since she began working independently over 20 years ago, the demands of the job — including higher caseloads and increased reporting requirements — have increased but the stagnant pay hasn’t come close to keeping up with inflation and the rising cost of living. There were the two pay cuts across the board — 10% in 2010 followed by another 5% in 2011 — and, nearly a decade later, special educators were overlooked when some therapists got the modest bump in 2022. “At that point, I was really thinking long and hard about leaving early intervention,” Lengen said. 

Despite her financial advisor’s recommendation that she at least consider working in a school district, Lengen decided to stick around, noting that she loves the work and didn’t want to start over late in her career. But many other early intervention providers have left the field.

When Sandra Ribeiro started providing physical therapy through early intervention in 2000, she said, “we were some of the highest paid across our profession, and we had support.”

At that time, all of the early intervention providers involved in a child’s case would gather monthly with each family to coordinate services and brainstorm what could be changed or improved. But that practice began to erode more than a decade ago when the state stopped paying professionals for the time spent in those meetings. 

Ribeiro has a doctorate in physical therapy, and is fluent in five languages (Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish and English). That’s a huge asset in the many multilingual homes she’s visited. She points out that providing in-home therapy to an incredibly diverse group of families — some cooperative and supportive of her efforts and others less so — is a complicated assignment. 

“It requires a high skill level to be able to work with a very young child to start with,” she said, “and then you have to be able to incorporate the family.” Still, she found it deeply rewarding to see the progress a child could make when delays and challenges were addressed early in life. One grateful family still sends her a Christmas card every year, even though the “child” she helped is now 24 years old. “I don’t think you can get that in other settings — you’re not a fixture of the home,” she said.

Over the years, not only did Ribeiro’s pay fail to rise significantly, but it also became much more difficult to get reimbursed for her work at all. “If you forget to do one little thing on your paperwork it gets kicked back and it can be months before you get paid,” she said. Over the last decade, there have been some in the program, and that has led to stepped up reporting requirements and auditing for all. 

On weeks when everything went very smoothly — and there were no last-minute cancellations or no shows — Ribeiro would clear $1,500. But many weeks there were hiccups beyond her control that cut into that income. Two and a half years ago, she decided she had had enough and left early intervention for a job teaching physical therapy at LaGuardia Community College in New York City. Most experienced therapists she knows have also left the state-run program over the years, Ribeiro said. 

“We all know that when you go into health care it’s not for the money,” she said. “But you have to be able to say to yourself, ‘My work is worth something.’ And a lot of therapists have been so demoralized they shy away from early intervention even though in our hearts we would love to still be in those homes.” 

Since Ribeiro left the field, the payment issues have only gotten worse. Over the last year, scores of New York providers have faced because of glitches with the state’s new data and payment portal, the .

Meanwhile, across New York state, countless families no longer have access to critical therapies because of the steady attrition from the field. Rural families have been especially hard hit. In the remote Tri-Lakes region of northern New York, Katie Wheeler’s 3-year-old daughter missed months of early intervention services that she was entitled to because of a shortage of providers. 

Diagnosed with autism around the age of 2, the child qualified for in-home special education services and speech therapy. In early 2024, she was assigned a special ed teacher who came to her home two or three times a week, but a few months later, when the state dissolved the agency providing those special education services, the toddler lost access to that support for about a year. She received speech therapy virtually last winter; in-person early intervention sessions weren’t an option due to the lack of providers in the region. The virtual sessions went surprisingly smoothly for the toddler. “It worked so well, I was surprised,” said Wheeler. “They really pour their heart into what they are doing, and she grew immensely.”

At the start of 2025, however, New York’s virtual early intervention providers learned that they would be getting a sizable pay cut. Ironically, the rate cut for telehealth services, as they are officially known, was initiated to free up funds for the pending 5% increases for in-person services in the state, which is still awaiting approval from the federal Medicaid office.

Wheeler’s daughter’s speech therapist, along with most other virtual providers in her county, promptly quit, which Wheeler says she entirely understands. “We were not given anyone else because there was no one else to be given,” she said. The family did pay out of pocket for some speech therapy, but in the six months that her daughter went without early intervention services over the winter and spring, Wheeler said she could see significant regression. When she was in speech therapy, the child could name an animal when shown a picture, and make its sound, for instance; but without services, much of that language slipped away. 

When the girl became old enough to receive special education services through school, there was another months-long delay to get services set up. In an effort to access more robust special education services, the family recently moved to nearby St. Lawrence County. Wheeler knows that most families would not be able to take such an extreme and expensive step.

With the recent loss of virtual providers, she said, “there are going to be so many kids without anything.”

Research has shown that timely receipt of early intervention, in the years when the brain is developing far more rapidly than at any other point, is critical to child development, and can improve life outcomes far down the road. Many children who receive early intervention do not in kindergarten, including slightly less than half of those with developmental delays, according to one 2007 study.

When delays and challenges aren’t addressed in the early years, they show up — often aggravated — in schools, where there’s rarely the time and resources to address them. “Kids are going to preschool and kindergarten with lower skills than ever,” said Amanda Wilbert. “They’ve never gotten services, and they desperately need them.”

There are many reasons, advocates say, that it’s been such a long struggle to increase pay for early intervention providers in New York. The isolated instances of fraud have been cited by some state officials as a reason for not investing more, said Hurley.

But the unprecedented rate freeze — which long predates the fraud — also speaks to the societal and political invisibility of babies with developmental delays and disabilities, according to early childhood advocates. And it speaks to the invisibility of an overwhelmingly female labor force whose work occurs largely in the private space of the home. 

For now, with the slashes to Medicaid, the push to increase rates in New York is on the back burner, although it is not totally off the table. Hurley and others say they remain committed to advocating for changes that will improve the system, including studying alternative models for delivering services.

Lengen said that many months ago, she stopped looking for the 5% rate increase promised a year and a half ago to finally provide a small boost to her income. “At some point, you stop believing that it’s going to come,” she said.

But unlike so many others, she has no plans to go anywhere. “I hate the fact that the state and county don’t think we are worth giving money to,” she said. “But I love the job and the families,” she added, noting the joy that comes from teaching and playing with the littlest learners on their level.

“I will work in early intervention until the day I can not get up off that floor.”

Around , Albek received a call from a friend. “Alicia, there’s a fire behind your house,” Albek recalled hearing before looking out her window to see that the hill behind her home was on fire.

Within minutes, Albek started contacting the children’s parents. Due to road closures, two families could not get to Albek’s home to pick up their children, both 18 months old.

“I said I would drop them off on our way to evacuate,” said Albek. “It took me half an hour to drop off one baby a block away. It took me two hours to drop off the other less than two miles away.”

“We were stuck on Sunset [Boulevard]. There was a car in the middle of the road … and it had caught fire. I couldn’t help but think: We’re going to blow,” said Albek.

“My daughter was in a car in front of us. I had someone else’s baby in my backseat. All I could think is, I have to get them away from this fire.”

Albek succeeded in dropping off the two toddlers before evacuating with her daughter and husband to her son’s home in the San Fernando Valley. They stayed for three weeks before finding a rental home to live in temporarily. 

Albek’s house was burned, along with her backyard. She’s still waiting for her home to be cleared of the ash and lead that entered through the vents and crevices so she can begin to rebuild. Since she evacuated, she hasn’t been able to provide child care for the 20 families she served.

Albek’s program was one of child care facilities destroyed in the , according to The Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times reported in late January that at least of them were home-based. Families who relied on these programs had to look for alternative arrangements, but , let alone, child care has become increasingly challenging.

Home-based child care providers faced overwhelming dilemmas. Many grieved as they lost their home and business in one fell swoop. And, they carried the weight of navigating loss. Months later, these challenges persist as providers continue to feel the consequences of the fires. 

Below are the stories of eight providers who live in communities hit hard by the wildfires. (With support from Home Grown, a funders collaborative focused on home-based child care, the providers were given a small stipend for their time.) Five lost their homes and businesses, and three have been unable to reopen. Two have had to find a new location to reopen their child care facility, while figuring out a temporary housing solution for their own family. While each provider has their own story, all of them echoed a similar message: a commitment to their community and the children they serve.

Alana Lewis’ neighbor’s backyard in Altadena, California days after the Eaton Fire. (Alana Lewis)

These vignettes offer a small window into the experiences of home-based providers who lived through the fires — the emotional toll of the losses they faced, the responsibility they feel to get back to providing care, and the aid they need as they navigate the recovery process. 

The vignettes below draw quotes from interviews, which have been lightly edited for length and clarity. Two interviews were conducted in Spanish and translated into English. 

Alicia Albek

Neighborhood: Pacific Palisades, California

Number of children served: 20  

Number of years providing child care: 30

Impacted by: Palisades Fire

Still providing child care? No

Alicia Albek immigrated from Argentina to the United States in 1976, and moved to Los Angeles in 1983. She settled down in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood with her husband and was inspired by her own children to open a home-based child care program. In 1995, she opened Alicia’s Place. This year would have been the 30th anniversary of her program. 

When the fires broke out, Albek was serving around 20 children from 6 months to 4 years old, accommodating a variety of family schedules and preferences for the days and hours of care.  

“[The Palisades] is a place [where] you know the clerks in your local markets, the post office people, the mail lady,” Albek reminisced. “It’s very horrible what is going on. Hopefully, we can rebuild.”

Albek’s family lost their home in the Palisades fire. She also lost her child care program. She has been living in a rental home while waiting for the debris to be cleared from her home, and for the necessary approvals to begin reconstruction. She isn’t sure if she’ll reopen Alicia’s Place. That depends on how the home repairs go, she said. 

The families Albek cared for moved out of the neighborhood, she said, but she saw some of them recently at a gathering she hosted at her rental. 

“A few of the families showed up. People were crying. They were all displaced. Some were still looking for child care,” she explained. Others have found care, but she said: “I have people telling me that they’re finding new places, but nothing like ours — like home away from home. I had it set up so beautifully. The kids were so comfortable there, and the parents were comfortable to have a safe, clean, loving place for their kids.” 

Marcia Colasanti

Neighborhood: Santa Monica, California

Number of children served: 6

Number of years providing child care: 18

Impacted by: Palisades Fire

Still providing child care? Yes

Marcia Colasanti immigrated to Los Angeles from Brazil to study at a local university. After navigating the child care system for her own children, and volunteering at her son’s day care, she decided to open her own program. “I saw the great impact I could have in my community,” said Colasanti. “I looked into it, and decided to open my own business.”

Colasanti has been running her program since 2007. Her home wasn’t damaged by the fires, but her community was impacted and she said she’s been trying to support them as best she can.

When the fires began, Colasanti closed her doors for three days. Her only employee, who had an infant son, had evacuated and she couldn’t open alone. “She did not feel good about us closing,” said Colasanti. “I told her not to worry, it’s a natural disaster.” After evacuating to a relative’s home, her employee came back, Colasanti said. “She commuted from the [San Fernando] Valley.” 

Shortly after she reopened, Colasanti learned that one of the families she provided care for had lost their home. “The family was traumatized. I offered them child care after hours, whatever I could do to help,” she said.

Colasanti’s costs increased during the fires. She installed air purifiers in every room and her electric bill “skyrocketed,” she said. Meanwhile, two of the six families she provided care for could not pay because their jobs were located in an evacuation zone. Colasanti provided free care for two weeks. With the increased electric bill and interruption of payments, she . 

Colasanti hopes that in the future, providers are given the resources they need to survive a disaster. “I was very fortunate I did not have to close my doors for good. I know many child care providers who did, who are struggling to reopen,” she said. 

Aurys Hernandez Carillo

Neighborhood: Altadena, California

Number of children served: 12

Number of years providing child care: 19

Impacted by: Eaton Fire

Still providing child care? No

Aurys Hernandez Carillo immigrated from El Salvador to Los Angeles when she was a teenager. While attending college, she worked part-time at a local child care center. She fell in love with the work, and shared her dream of owning her own child care center with her mother. The two decided to open a home-based child care program of their own. Her mother retired in 2021, making Hernandez Carillo the sole owner of the business.

In the early hours of Jan. 8, Hernandez Carillo evacuated her home with her husband, their children (then 5 and 8 years old) and her parents who lived with her. They only had time to grab two changes of clothes and their documents.

Their home was gone by the morning. 

“In the morning, the families [of the children I cared for] started to call me. They did not want to tell me what happened to my home, only that it was bad in our zone,” said Hernandez Carillo through tears. “I felt terrible. How could I tell my kids we had nothing?”

Hernandez Carillo and her family moved between short-term Airbnb rentals and friends’ couches for months. She eventually received a check from her home insurance to cover temporary housing, but it could not be used on short-term lodging like hotels or Airbnb. Hernandez Carillo searched for weeks for an affordable space that she could use the housing support from her insurer on, but the search proved difficult with the in the area. 

The outside area of Hernandez Carillo’s home after the Eaton Fire. (Aurys Hernandez Carillo)

While she wanted to rent a home that was suitable for reopening her business, property managers gave her a cold shoulder, she said. “When I tell them that I would like to have a day care there, they tell me they are not renting for that,” said Hernandez Carillo. “There are some realtors who have said they’ll discuss with the owner, but they later declined because they do not want to go through inspections.” Ultimately, the families of the children she cared for had to find other options. 

Her family is now living in a rental apartment. She is studying to earn her teaching license in order to work at a center-based child care facility. She intended to pursue the additional licensure before the fires, but losing her business fast-tracked that plan. Without her business, her husband’s salary is the sole source of income for the family.  

Alana Lewis

Neighborhood: Altadena, California

Number of children served: 13

Number of years providing child care: 11

Impacted by: Eaton Fire

Still providing child care? No

Alana Lewis was born and raised in Altadena, California. She started her career in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) as a special education educator and worked in the district for 12 years before becoming a home-based child care provider in 2014.

“I’ve always had compassion for people. When I was at LAUSD, I was able to help children one-on-one,” said Lewis. “That’s why I opened up my own child care [center].”

Like Hernandez Carillo, Lewis evacuated her home in the early morning hours of Jan. 8. Later that day, she received news that her home was significantly damaged, with the backyard destroyed and inside filled with ash and debris. “One of my parents called and said, ‘Your house is gone. Don’t come up here, it’s devastating.’”

Lewis moved between hotels, short-term rentals, and family and friends’ couches until June. She had no source of income as she waited for her home to be cleared of debris, and relied on a patchwork of grants and community resources to sustain herself. Lewis looked for a temporary location in her community for her child care center. But, with many locations also partially or completely destroyed by the fires, she had no luck.

The families she served also endured loss. “I have two parents whose homes completely burned down. Some parents have had to find other child care, because they had to return to work. But I still keep in touch,” said Lewis. 

Lewis was able to return home in June. She reopened her program later that month, and is currently providing care for seven children.

As she reflected on her experiences since the fires, she said she hopes policymakers and advocates recognize the important role child care providers play in the lives of children and families, especially during challenging times.

“Please remember us,” said Lewis. “Consider what we bring to the community, how we are effective in children’s lives.”

Elizabeth Reilly and Shea Morris

Neighborhood: Pacific Palisades, California

Number of children served: 8

Number of years providing child care: 4 (30 years in education)

Impacted by: Palisades Fire

Are they still providing care? Yes

Elizabeth Reilly moved to Los Angeles from Houston, Texas, and currently lives in Woodland Hills. She co-owns the Eclipse School, a home-based learning center, with Shea Morris. Both were classroom teachers for decades before opening their child care business. The center was located in Morris’ home, which was lost in the Palisades Fire

“I felt the stress of losing the business, relocating, [knowing] that we have families counting on us. I had to put it all together, and support everybody who lost more than I had,” said Reilly. “Shea had to help her family and find a new home. In the beginning, I felt the weight of the loss of income, and the responsibility of leading Eclipse to its new home.”

While Morris focused on supporting herself and her family through the devastation of losing their home, Reilly took the lead in reopening their business. They were connected to someone who had extra space in her home. 

“The home and school burned Wednesday morning. We knew we were not going to be able to go back,” said Reilly. “We saw the [new] space that Friday.” By March, she said, they reopened the Eclipse School in Santa Monica, leveraging to expedite the opening. 

“The hardest part was not only losing my home, but the loss that was so much more than a place to live. It brought the loss of a community that I lived in for close to 20 years,” said Morris.

“I can have this sense of loss and I can be super grateful for all the people who reached out to help,” said Morris. “I have to give Beth credit. I was so focused on helping my family, and she was able to jump into action to help Eclipse.”

On Sept. 2, The Eclipse School started a new year at full capacity, with 12 children enrolled. 

Anonymous provider

Neighborhood: South Los Angeles, California

Number of children served: 2

Number of years providing child care: 17

Impacted by: L.A. County Wildfires

Still providing child care? Yes

One provider, who asked not to be identified by name due to concerns about in her community, moved to Los Angeles from Mexico in the early 2000s and she’s been caring for young children for nearly two decades. 

“My passion has always been caring for others. I studied nursing in Mexico,” she said. “Then, I started taking care of my son and providing child care for my two nephews. I realized I liked it, and that I wanted to dedicate myself to it.”

Over the years, she continued working in child care — she is a , meaning that she is a provider caring for the children of her family members, friends or neighbors in her community. 

She quickly learned she could not financially support herself on the income she earned from child care, so she picked up a second job. In the morning, she takes care of her niece and a neighbor’s daughter. In the afternoons, she works from home as a fabric trimmer for a clothing company.

Her home wasn’t in an evacuation zone, but she was impacted by the fires, and so were the families she supports. Her niece’s mother and her neighbor worked in the evacuation zone and experienced job interruptions, causing them to lose some of their income for weeks, so she watched the children while their parents went to seek work. 

During and after the fires, the provider incurred extra costs. She said she had to buy an air purifier because her neighbor’s daughter had asthma. “Even though we were inside the apartment, it smelled burnt. The ash, the smoke, travelled inside… There were days I helped her use her inhaler.” She also bought more toys to entertain the children in her care while they were stuck indoors due to smoke. 

She has continued to care for her niece and her neighbor’s daughter. Reflecting back on the fires, she said, “I wish there had been more immediate supports, like air purifiers or helping bring groceries to those who could not leave their homes. The smoke was toxic — we were not going outside at all.”

Felisa Wright

Neighborhood: Altadena, California

Number of children served: 14

Years of child care provider experience: 16

Impacted by: Eaton Fire

Still providing child care? Yes

Felisa Wright was born and raised in Los Angeles. She said she’s always felt called to caregiving, and worked in a children’s hospital before opening her home-based child care center in 2009. At the start of this year, the center served 14 children, including six of Wright’s grandchildren.

Wright lived in her home with her five daughters and her grandchildren. The family evacuated in the early morning hours of Jan. 8 and haven’t been able to return to their home since.

Like Hernandez Carillo, Wright has struggled to find a new place to live because of her business, for providers running a child care program out of their home. “Owners do not want to rent to me [when] I say I have an in-home day care. They say it’s too much responsibility, too much of a liability,” said Wright.

In August, Wright moved into a rental home with two of her daughters and three grandchildren, but her other three daughters and their kids have had to find lodging elsewhere. While she continues to provide child care for her six grandchildren, she has been unable to officially reopen her program to the public and enroll children from the community. She has gone without an income for months and, with no savings, she’s had to rely on credit cards for her expenses, small grants from organizations and a GoFundMe. 

Wright is hoping to reopen her child care program at her local church, using similar that Morris and Reilly used to streamline the Eclipse School’s opening. Her child care license was approved and she has set up the space, but she has been unable to obtain insurance and cannot operate the child care facility without it. But Wright said she’s committed.

“I love children. This is my purpose in life. This is what I’m supposed to be doing,” said Wright. “So I’m not going to stop.”

Home-based care providers deliver critical care during emergencies and periods of crisis, even when they are living through the experiences themselves and are personally by their impact. 

The L.A. County fires inspired around disaster response and recovery. Yet, there are still gaps where institutional support is not reaching those who need it, and around the progress that has been made. In recent months, there has been more investigation into understanding the consequences of the fires, including the and . 

“Consider what we bring to the community, how we are effective in children’s lives. We do it out of love and compassion for children,” Lewis said. “Child care providers became first responders during the pandemic. We did our part in a time of disaster. We stepped up. … Remember us.” she added.

Albek, Hernandez Carillo, Lewis and Wright provided care during stay at home orders of the pandemic. But when the fires came to their communities and they needed aid, the system failed them. 

The connection between nutrition and learning is undeniable, particularly in the earliest years, when children’s . Research has proven that hunger and food insecurity . There’s evidence that in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life can affect various elements of development and even change the structure of their brain. And researchers have suggested between household food insecurity in early childhood and kindergarten readiness. 

It’s difficult for a child who arrives at their school or child care program hungry to engage fully with educational activities, build relationships and develop the self-regulation skills essential for later academic success. CACFP addresses this fundamental barrier to learning by ensuring that children in child care programs and schools receive nutritious meals and snacks throughout the day, but the program is underused and unevenly accessed due to barriers including a lack of awareness among providers and administrative overload for participants.

indicates that among children from low-income families, CACFP participation can increase consumption of healthier foods. “If you compare centers that do participate in CACFP and those that don’t, the ones that are doing CACFP are oftentimes serving healthier meals because they have to have fruits, vegetables, whole grains [and foods with] reduced sugar and low sodium,” said Clarissa Hayes, deputy director of Child Nutrition Programs at the (FRAC). These requirements align with federal dietary guidelines and are regularly updated to reflect the latest nutritional science, she noted.

This nutritional quality has made CACFP “an indicator of quality when it comes to child care settings,” Hayes explained, because it demonstrates that programs are committed to supporting children’s overall well-being and development. 

The program helps kids “develop those healthy habits really early on,” said Alexia Thex, vice president of the , a national organization that supports the CACFP community. If children don’t build those habits when they’re very young, it’s extremely difficult to make changes through elementary, middle and high school.

CACFP operates through a reimbursement system in which eligible providers working in child care centers and family child care settings receive federal funding for serving meals that meet strict nutritional guidelines. Typically, providers use their own money to buy approved foods, which they prepare themselves, and then apply for reimbursement, but sometimes a program facilitates a contract for ordering and delivering prepared meals. Reimbursement levels are decided using a tiered system that was introduced in 1997. Providers serving children from low-income families receive higher reimbursements than those with children from more affluent families. 

Implementation varies from state to state. According to Thex, the reimbursement process is managed by various nonprofit in each state that are responsible for “maintaining program integrity while still getting tons of people fed and in all kinds of different areas.” These organizations also organize scheduled and surprise inspections to check in on how providers are using the funding. 

For many early learning programs, CACFP provides crucial financial support. Alethea Etinoff, who runs POC Learning Academy in Washington, D.C., has participated since 2013 and sees the program as beneficial on multiple levels. She uses the funding to cover the groceries needed to prepare healthy foods for the children in her program. “CACFP allows you to serve nutritious meals. I think it’s kind of fun because you get to introduce the kids to food that they may not get at home.” While her brussels sprouts received mixed reviews, she said the kids and families enjoy the exposure to a variety of options.

Early educators who participate with the program also gain valuable nutrition insights. “You don’t really think about how much sugar is in yogurt,” noted Etinoff. 

Despite its benefits, CACFP participation has declined significantly since 1997, primarily due to its administrative burden. The tiered system designed to direct resources to those most in need has created substantial paperwork requirements that many small providers find overwhelming. Consequently, 39% of eligible child care centers and 33% of eligible family child care homes do not participate, the National CACFP Association . 

In 2023, The association called for . “The paperwork has gotten a little bit crazy,” Thex contends. 

Rachel Bymun, who operates Luv Muffins Preschool and Child Care in Bay Point, California, described the daily reality: “The hardest part is having to track all the meals and having to plug that in every day for each one of the meals. And they’ve made the system so that if you don’t do it that day, you don’t get reimbursed for it.” Furthermore, she said, surprise CACFP inspections create an atmosphere of distrust. 

The process isn’t easy for providers. “If kids are in households that get SNAP, they’re automatically eligible for school meals,” Hayes explained. But that’s not the way it works with CACFP. The burden of eligibility falls on the provider, not the family — and many providers, who are already juggling multiple responsibilities may opt out due to time constraints and the complexity of the paperwork, which could jeopardize an important pathway to nutrition programs for families. 

The financial challenges are equally daunting. Many providers, particularly those in family child care settings, cannot access bulk purchasing discounts and must shop at local retailers. Meanwhile, reimbursement rates, while adjusted annually for inflation, do not justify increased administrative demands.

Janna Rodriguez, who runs Innovative Daycare Corp in Freeport, New York, said the reimbursements can feel paltry. “I’m spending $2,500 to $3,000 on food monthly on 16 children who are here from 7:30 in the morning till 5:25 in the afternoon, and they’re receiving breakfast, morning snack, lunch and dinner. They only reimburse me for two meals and a snack.” 

“As a child care owner, I appreciate the reimbursements,” said Rodriguez. “But the bureaucratic part is causing some of us to wonder if it’s really worth it.”

Despite its challenges, CACFP does offset food costs for many providers and demonstrates remarkable adaptability in serving diverse communities. Thex noted that programs can be culturally responsive and customize their menus, for example, serving halal foods for Muslim families, accommodating plant-forward preferences and even sourcing organic ingredients when possible.

Similarly, the program supports children with special dietary needs. Bymun started her child care program because her daughter had severe food allergies. She regularly adapts meals for children with various allergies and dietary restrictions, though this flexibility comes at a significant additional cost.

CACFP helps, but the program only works if it’s accessible for the providers, Bymun noted. 

As the cuts take effect and families lose access to SNAP benefits, Etinoff anticipates that “CACFP is going to be a lifeline for the parents.”

But recently, the Bugaj family’s circumstances changed overnight. 

In August, her husband’s union , and the unexpected disruption in income suddenly made it tough to pay tuition for their toddler and infant to attend . Bugaj said the weekly cost for their 4-year-old Cecilia is $295 and for their 7-month-old Josie is $370.

The child care center’s scholarship program made it possible for Cecilia and Josie to continue to attend the program as their father’s strike went on. There was no form to fill out. The director, Julia Myers, didn’t request Bugaj’s tax returns. The family didn’t even have to ask.

Founded in 1871, Toledo Day Nursery is the oldest child care center in Ohio and has of serving working-class families in the industrial city. While some states, like Minnesota, have early education scholarships, this approach is distinct in that it is supported by philanthropic funding and there’s no cumbersome application process. 

Toledo Day Nursery’s scholarship program, which launched last summer, is designed to meet the needs of families experiencing sudden or unexpected financial stress. Job loss, a new baby, a death in the family and even the perennial of the holiday season have led families to receive these short-term scholarships. 

The scholarships are available to families who don’t qualify for subsidies through or its — which are determined on the basis of gross income — but are still struggling to afford care.

The funds the program as part of its , which is an effort to strengthen the U.S. child care system. Marica Cox Mitchell, Bainum’s chief program officer, praises Toledo Day Nursery for aggressively tapping into any and all public funding for families of young children. “They had the vision to make tuition free,” she said. “There are families who need child care support but don’t meet the rigid income eligibility requirements, and it’s interesting to discover how many families say: ‘You can’t tell from looking at us, with both parents working, but you can’t imagine what this financial relief means to us.’ ” 

Bugaj said she’s benefited from this program once before. “I was doing drop-off with Cecilia,” she recalled, “and I was getting closer to my due date. Julia said, ‘I wanted to let you know you won’t incur tuition for Cecilia when the baby comes.’” 

“Any family who goes on maternity leave while enrolled in our program doesn’t have to pay for 12 weeks,” Myers said. Families don’t have to bring diapers or formula for their children either. Toledo Day Nursery’s scholarships cover these costs as well. 

Before the scholarship program began, Myers said, she remembers “having a mom in my office, crying because she didn’t want to leave our community but could not afford it anymore.” That mom wasn’t alone. The cost of child care creates stress for many American families. Research shows that such financial anxiety might cause parents to withdraw their children from child care in order to save money; revealed that 27% of parents in America have quit a job or dropped out of education to avoid the soaring cost of child care. 

Between enrollment issues, staffing shortages and closures, the early childhood education system in Ohio is struggling. According to a published in 2024 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, 54% of early educator respondents in Ohio said at least one child care program in their community had closed in the previous year, and 62% of respondents reported that their program was under-enrolled, a factor that exacerbates financial challenges.

A scholarship program like the one at Toledo Day Nursery doesn’t solve all of these systemic issues, but for some families, it makes child care affordable so they can keep their kids enrolled.

For the Bugaj family, the scholarship program is only part of the draw to the center. In 2021, when Bugaj first discovered the program via a Google search, she found it “welcoming right off the bat. I could tell when I took a site tour that it’s a calmer environment for kids. It’s a loving environment for kids.” 

Myers, who has a daughter currently attending Toledo Day Nursery and a son who recently graduated, said the pedagogy draws upon Montessori and Reggio Emilia approaches, but it’s the “school family,” as she calls this community, that explains the culture. “There’s no way for me to separate my personal life and my work life,” she said, “because my personal life is living and breathing this school.” 

As a local mother of kids in the program who has personally experienced the financial stress of raising young children, Myers proposed the idea of these short-term scholarships to aid families through unexpected financial challenges. Myers said the Bainum Family Foundation trusted her when she told them how it could help. 

In an effort to expand impact beyond her own program Myers and her colleague Chelsea Davis, who leads the program’s second location, applied to a local run by Groundwork Ohio. 

The fellowship intends to help early educators and leaders build solutions and advocate for the children and families they serve. “Myers and Davis exemplify the kind of strong, visionary leadership Ohio needs for its youngest children and families,” said Lynanne Gutierrez, the organization’s president and CEO. “We are proud to support them through the fellowship as they continue to grow their leadership, elevate the voices of families and shape a brighter, more equitable future for children in their community and across the state.”

“We don’t have to look at other countries for examples,” proclaims Mitchell. “We can make it happen here, in places like Toledo.”

The child care needs of U.S. military families are often utterly distinct from those of civilians. That has led to the creation of a child care system that is often held up as one of the nation’s exemplars — . With more funding, thoughtful systems-building and innovations to address its gaps, the military has taken major steps in recent decades to increase access to high-quality child care options. That said, the landscape of military child care is not well understood, especially by outsiders. Having a better grasp of the contours of military child care programs could help policymakers apply lessons to the broader U.S. child care system. 

The military provides a diverse range of options including on- and off-base. A 2021 report found that nearly 50,000 children were enrolled in the Department of Defense’s on-base child development centers; nearly 25,000 children were enrolled in DOD’s school-age care programs; and 2,700 children were receiving care in DOD family child care homes. The families of another roughly 26,000 children were receiving fee assistance to acquire care from community providers near their base. 

In addition, the military offers , facilities where providers care for children in a home-like setting during traditional and nontraditional hours; these centers are designed to meet the needs of workers with rotating schedules or nontraditional hours, such as nights and weekends.

Backed by around a year in public funding and receiving bipartisan support because of implications for recruitment, retention and troop performance, DOD child care options tend to be of solid quality. As the GAO chart below shows, different settings have varied quality-related requirements, but all of the on-base programs include multiple annual unannounced inspections.

While care is not free for servicemembers, it is : An active duty family making between $55,000 and $65,000 pays a standard fee of $74 a week, or slightly under $4,000 a year. By comparison, civilian child care slots frequently cost a year. 

For all its strengths, the U.S. military child care system still struggles with many of the challenges that plague its civilian counterpart — challenges undergirded by inadequate public funding such as insufficient slots and high levels of staff churn. That says something about the true price tag of a good child care system, given how much is put into military child care. With the substantial percentage of military families that opt to use off-base child care due either to a lack of on-base capacity or having special needs, the weakness and scarcity that mark the country’s civilian child care system also impacts the military. In 2024, the top enlisted officer in the Air Force that DOD needed to decide whether child care was a “requirement or a nice to have.”

All told, military child care slots can be hard to secure and do not always match family needs: As of 2023, , around 12,000 children were on waitlists for child care. That’s problematic, especially given that around one-third of military spouses who wish to work outside the home . 

Recruiting and retaining qualified staff is a constant challenge — the range from 35 to 50%, but there’s a unique twist:  Many military child care employees are the spouses of servicemembers and thus highly transient. The turnover rates are also driven by familiar factors that plague the sector broadly: low compensation, stressful work environments and limited opportunities for career progress. These challenges were exacerbated by a temporary hiring freeze put in place earlier this year by the Trump administration. 

Recently, the nonprofit military news organization War Horse the military child care system is “delicately balanced on a wobbling foundation, made shakier by the frequent moves of its primary pool of employees — military spouses. But suddenly, the was upended by staffing shortages that rippled from base to base after a DOD-wide hiring freeze announced in late February prevented centers from filling vacancies. Even though child care providers were exempted from the freeze three weeks after it was announced, the damage has persisted for months.”

Despite these obstacles, there are innovators within military child care trying to forge new paths. HomeFront Help, for example, an initiative of the nonprofit , provides free training and screenings to individuals who want to become what are known as Helpers. These Helpers then set a reasonable rate and provide one-off, part-time, and/or emergency child care for military families, who can access them through local databases. By facilitating the connections of trained and reliable Helpers to families who need them, the philanthropically funded initiative fills in gaps and needs in ways a Child Development Center cannot.

During a pilot of the program at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida, Helpers supported over 150 families with more than 550 days of care.

In a different vein, an app specifically developed for military families and their unpredictable schedules to other military families while they’re traveling or on leave. Typically, parents have to cover the cost of care even when their family is away, but this app allows them to support another military family by providing a child care slot, and in return, they receive a credit they can apply to their child’s care. As of April 2025, more than 12,000 spots had temporarily changed hands, according to Air Force officials.

The DOD is also with community providers, essentially creating off-base child care programs, as with a new facility in Norfolk, Virginia, operated by a local YMCA. This strategy allows the DOD to expand its child care capacity far faster than relying only on building and staffing additional on-base facilities.

If one squints, there are emerging principles from the military child care system of the mid-2020s that are broadly applicable: Substantial public funding that enables deep fee cuts compared to a market-based system. Supply-side expansion efforts backed by those public dollars. An emphasis on flexibility and a population’s diverse set of needs and preferences. A balance between accountability and autonomy. Engagement of both licensed professionals and community members.

The U.S. military child care system is far from perfect. Given, however, that it is one area where the country has gotten past first-order fights about whether the government should even be involved in child care, it’s worth continuing to keep a close eye on — and holding up as a continued source of hope for those who believe a better approach to American child care is possible.

Gonzalez is a longtime community organizer and advocate who works with community health workers and in the local school system in Santa Ana, California, a city . Most kids and families she knows spent their summers cooped up inside for fear of walking outside and being taken. She has seen for herself kids running in search of safe places to go when they see a truck that could have ICE agents, and knows firsthand of parents being detained after walking kids to school, and of raids at a popular grocery store. “The aisles are now empty since no one ventures outside anymore,” she said.

But the changes to the tax code that target immigrant families are the least of her concerns right now. “We used to offer classes about how to pay taxes,” she said, speaking of The Promotoras, a community support group that she is involved in that provided resources for families adjusting to life in the United States. “But we aren’t even giving out information about the taxes now because we are so impacted by worrying about who is going to come home each night.

Growing up, as the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, her grandfather would stop by the panaderia every Sunday and invite people who had recently arrived from Mexico into their house for menudo, a type of Mexican spicy stew. Gonzalez, fluent in both English and Spanish, would translate and help fill out immigration paperwork and tax forms.

For decades, immigrants in her community were actively encouraged to file taxes, she said. Having taxes in good standing was one of the criteria for gaining citizenship under the Reagan administration’s 1986 reform, which happened when Gonzalez was in 6th grade. But 40 years later, Gonzalez is now hearing from more people that they are scared to file taxes and have decided to hold off. “Who wants to tell the IRS where you are? Right now, silence is our safety.” 

Changing the filing requirements for the Child Tax Credit is a recent action by the Trump administration to revoke benefits for noncitizens — one that creates a particular pain point for families with young children. In the passed this summer, Congress increased the CTC amount to $2,200 and indexed it to inflation, and also , including requiring children and at least one parent to have a Social Security number. 

More than who are American citizens are living with an undocumented immigrant according to estimates from a study published by Brookings Institution in April. More than 2.7 million are children in elementary and middle school grades and 1.96 million are under 6 years old. 

Policy experts believe that many of these families would have qualified for the Child Tax Credit under the previous policy, but will no longer be able to receive it due to this change. Many of these kids are American citizens living with parents who pay taxes through an (ITIN), not a Social Security number. The IRS issues ITINs and relies on them to collect tax revenue from people who may not have work authorization but still earn income in the United States. By contrast, a Social Security number is issued by the Social Security Administration and is only available to citizens and those legally authorized to work in the United States, including or have a pending asylum claim with work authorization. 

A family’s income also plays a role. According to from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy, an estimated 19 million children under age 17 will be ineligible for the full Child Tax Credit because their family’s income isn’t high enough to qualify, up from 17 million under the previous policy. For children under 6, estimates show that 30% could be ineligible for the full credit because of their family’s income. The analysis in the brief estimates that a family with two children will now need to make $41,500 in income to receive the full tax benefit, a leap from $36,000 under the previous policy. 

Since its inception in 1997, the CTC has been a partially refundable tax credit, meaning that people who file with a little or no tax burden can still receive the credit in the form of a refund. And in 2021, it was the one time “advanced refundability” of the CTC that sent checks to so many households in America, cutting child poverty in half and being lauded as the most (and no, the checks aren’t likely to return). The credit also enjoys widespread popularity with a , which crosses party lines.

The shift to requiring that children and at least one parent have a Social Security number to access social benefits is part of a larger effort that dates back to the Gingrich era in 1996, explains Josh McCabe, director of social policy at the Niskanen Center. This was when Republicans took control of Congress and unveiled the “Contract for America,” which was designed to rework a number of the country’s social programs. This included changing the earned income tax credit — a refundable tax credit for low income families, which has been long considered one of the — to require tax filers to have Social Security numbers. But even with the changes to the EITC, parents filing taxes with an ITIN could still claim the Child Tax Credit, McCabe explained. 

Excluding immigrant families from receiving the CTC isn’t likely to have a meaningful impact on immigration, said McCabe. “Most people don’t migrate for tax credits,” he said. “But people who are here, legal or not, with families and with kids, will have fewer resources to get by on.” 

Chris Wimer, director of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy and Megan Curran, policy director of the organization, said that while the changes brought about by this shift to the CTC will affect families, the impacts are dwarfed by the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, which will hit families hard. Even the $200 increase in the CTC does little to offset it. “It’s basically lower than it was previously given that inflation has overtaken the $200 increase,” said Wimer. 

“Those are the same kids that are going to see the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid and the ACA Tax Credits, and could see changes to eligibility for free school meals,” Curran said. 

Economist Kathryn Edwards said that adding the additional Social Security number requirement is creating a “chilling effect.” She adds: “It is a — when you target mixed status families they drop out of programs they are eligible for. These are kids eligible for Medicaid, but maybe the mom is afraid of what could happen to her brother. That is the point of all of these changes, intimidation and fear.” 

For Gonzalez, there is little surprise that the CTC has been targeted. “They pick on the kids,” she said. “They know how much we love our families.” She works with many families that have at least one parent with an ITIN, and said many of them have been in this country for 20 years paying taxes. “They use their ITIN numbers to buy a house, get a phone or a car,” she said. 

Any possible savings from limiting the CTC could be offset by those afraid of filing at all, she said. “The U.S. is going to be losing all that money.”

A new child tax credit is coming next year, bringing significant changes that will alter how much assistance families receive — and which families can receive it.

With his , President Donald Trump passed a permanent change to the child tax credit spearheaded by congressional Republicans. It goes into effect for families filing income tax returns in 2026. 

The changes increase the total amount of the tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200, and index it to inflation so it grows over the years, a change advocates have championed for years. However, the package also introduces new parameters to qualify for the credit that will directly affect immigrants and the lowest-income families.

For the first time, children and at least one of their parents or guardians will have to have a Social Security number to be able to qualify for the child tax credit. That means an estimated American kids who likely qualify for the credit this year will no longer be able to get it as of next year. 

The tax credit was passed in 1997. Families help cover basic needs like food and also wants, like getting their children into extracurricular activities. 

But for its nearly 30-year history, the credit has been structured in a way that families with the lowest incomes couldn’t get the full amount. With the most recent change, and because the credit phases in depending on income and the number of children you have, families have to earn more before they can claim the full amount.

Democrats had been pushing to change those requirements in recent years so that the lowest-income families could get more of the credit, but Republicans pushed back, saying it . 

Under the new child tax credit, an estimated 19 million children are now blocked from receiving the full amount, compared with 17 million currently, according to an analysis by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, which has done much of the research and analysis on the child tax credit. The share of children from marginalized backgrounds who are not going to be able to receive the full amount has also gone up for each group:

• 48 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native children (from 45 percent under the current law)
• 45 percent of Black children (from 41 percent)
• 39 percent of Latinx children (from 34 percent)
• 60 percent of children of single mothers (from 55 percent)
• 35 percent of children in rural parts of the country (from 30 percent)

“Families of all sizes are going to need higher levels of income to be eligible for the full credit amount,” said Christopher Yera, a research analyst at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. The child tax credit is being cut at a time when other vital services for low-income Americans are seeing reduction.

Under the same tax package, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is losing in funding through 2034, affecting eligibility for free school meals and for families that rely on the assistance to put food on the table. Another will be cut from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the next decade. 

“All these families that are going to lose access to basic needs, it would be handy if the folks harmed by that were actually reached by the child tax credit,” said Meredith Dodson, the senior director of public policy for the Coalition on Human Needs who has been lobbying for an expansion of the credit.

Here is a breakdown of how the new child tax credit works and how to access it: 

What is the child tax credit?

The child tax credit is a return parents and guardians receive in their taxes annually for every child under the age of 17 in their care. Stepchildren, foster children, half siblings and descendants, including grandchildren and nieces or nephews, may also qualify if the tax filer is their main caretaker.

Since 2017, the most families could claim from the credit is $2,000 per child, and that amount goes down after a certain threshold. 

Guardians who earn very little or nothing have never been able to claim the full amount of the credit except for , when it temporarily expanded during the pandemic.

What is the new child tax credit amount? 

For the 2025 tax filing year, the child tax credit will increase to $2,200. Eligible parents will see this amount in their tax returns next year. 

The credit will also be adjusted annually to account for inflation beginning in 2026.

Who qualifies for the new child tax credit? 

If filing a single return, parents and guardians must have a Social Security number to access the credit. This is a significant departure from prior years when only the children, but not the adults claiming them, had to have a Social Security number. 

For parents and guardians who are filing jointly, only one parent has to have a Social Security number to qualify. That means some mixed-status households will be able to qualify for the credit. 

To be able to claim a child, the child has to have: 

• Lived with the parent or caregiver for at least six months during 2025 (though there are some exceptions)
• Lived six months or more in the United States
• Have a Social Security number

The shift is part of a years-long effort to limit immigrants’ access to government services. Before 2017, any child living in the United States was eligible for the child tax credit. Then Trump’s tax cuts package in 2017 changed that rule to require that the child have a Social Security number to qualify. Their parents could use an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN, to file their taxes and still be eligible for the credit. Now at least one of those parents will need to also have a Social Security number. 

Families headed by an undocumented single parent, where the child is an American citizen, will not get the child tax credit at all. 

“Instead of actually expanding the [child tax credit], they took it away from millions of kids,” Dodson said. “There are important changes [in the law] but they kind of miss the mark when the whole thing is leaving out the folks who need it the most.”

Does everyone who qualifies get $2,200? 

No. Families who earn less than $2,500 a year do not receive anything. After that, the credit begins to phase in depending on how much families earn. (Keep reading for exact figures)

Some families earn little and owe no taxes. Those families are eligible for only a portion of the child tax credit, up to $1,700 in 2025. That means that even if your tax liability is zero, you can still receive a check for up to $1,700 for the child tax credit.

Then, the credit starts to phase out once families earn too much to qualify for the full amount. For a single filer, the credit starts to decrease for any amount they earn past $200,000; for joint filers the threshold is $400,000. Caregivers earning more than $240,000 for a single filer and $440,000 for joint filers do not receive anything. 

What is the minimum you need to earn to qualify for the full amount? 

According to an analysis by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University: 

• Families with one child: A single filer needs to earn at least $28,700; joint filers need to earn at least $36,500.Ěý
• Families with two children: A single filer needs to earn at least $33,700; joint filers need to earn at least $41,500.
• Families with three children: A single filer needs to earn at least $38,700; joint filers need to earn at least $46,500.Ěý
• Families with four children: A single filer needs to earn at least $45,800; joint filers need to earn at least $51,500.Ěý

Who doesn’t qualify? 

Children who don’t have a Social Security number don’t qualify. Single parents or guardians who don’t have a Social Security number also don’t qualify, even if the child does have a Social Security number. 

An estimated 28 percent of children will not qualify for the full amount because their parents earn too little. That is up from 25 percent previously, according to an analysis by the Center on Poverty and Policy at Columbia. The share of kids who are ineligible because their parents earn too much stays the same, at 4 percent.

The states with the largest share of children who don’t qualify for the full amount are Mississippi (40.6 percent), Louisiana (38.2 percent), New Mexico (38.2 percent), Alabama (35.1 percent) and Kentucky (34.9 percent). 

How do you claim the credit in your taxes? 

Filers must include their children or dependents on Form 1040, the Individual Income Tax Return, and also complete a Schedule 8812.

Is this like the child tax credit in 2021? 

No. In 2021, that to give families up to $3,600, much of it in the form of monthly checks, instead of an annual lump sum. The 2021 expansion allowed the poorest families in the country, those who don’t file income taxes, to access the child tax credit for the first time in its history. Those pandemic-era changes cut the child poverty rate in 2021 to a historic low of 5.2 percent. 

But the temporary changes lasted only a year, and an effort by Democrats to make them permanent failed. The tax credit then reverted back to its usual amount — $2,000 — and the child poverty rate rose to 12.4 percent in 2022. 

Is this a temporary change or a permanent one? 

This is a permanent change. Previous child tax credit expansions have been in place for a set number of years and when it was time for those changes to expire, lawmakers renegotiated the new parameters. 

That is why the child tax credit came up this year — changes put in place in 2017 were set to expire in 2025. 

What the new version does differently is make the changes permanent. Lawmakers can still tweak the credit if they want to later, but there is no set date where the changes will end and the credit will revert back to a former amount. 

When I delivered my first child, I was diagnosed with thrombocytopenia, a condition that caused excessive bleeding and made an epidural too dangerous. After delivery, stress triggered both preeclampsia and shingles. My daughter spent her first week in the NICU while my family prayed over us both, and I remained on bed rest.

This time, I had a health care team that was prepared to support me through my pregnancy. But too many women don’t have access to that level of care or planning. And a healthy delivery is just the beginning. For many families, the challenges can mount up quickly: a lack of paid leave, unaffordable child care and limited postpartum support. These aren’t personal failings — they’re systemic gaps. And they’re among the reasons .

Recently, I’ve heard a lot of ideas about how to encourage people to have more children, including suggestions from the , such as motherhood medals or one-time baby bonuses. I’ve seen these issues from every angle as a mother, an advocate and as the executive director of the (NAFCC). The answer is clear to me. To build a country where families want to — and are able to — raise children, we must start with three core policies: improving maternal health care, expanding paid family leave and making child care more accessible and affordable.

Improve Maternal Health

The for maternal mortality among wealthy countries. The numbers are even more devastating for , who are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, regardless of education or income.

As a Black woman with a college education, I face a pregnancy-related mortality rate that is than that of my white counterparts. This time around, I’m fortunate to have a Black OB-GYN who understands these disparities, but many women don’t have access to culturally competent care or even basic prenatal services. Over 2.2 million women live in “,” with another 4.8 million in areas with limited access to maternity care.

Solutions exist. Expanding , especially in rural communities, and ensuring pregnant women have access are meaningful steps toward safer outcomes for all mothers. Additionally, bills like the, introduced in 2019 and 2021, seek to make sure investments are targeted where they are needed most. But there’s significantly more work to be done.

Increase Access to Paid Leave

After my newborn and I made it home in good health, I, like most other parents of young children, had to contend with the tradeoff between staying at home or maintaining employment. Unlike most other developed countries, the U.S. policy. My husband and I are fortunate enough to have paid parental leave plans from our employers, but nearly , according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This forces many parents to return to work before they’re ready or to leave their jobs entirely.

As of 2024, thirteen states and Washington, D.C., have . It’s time to scale these solutions nationally. No parent should have to choose between a paycheck and bonding with their newborn.

Expand Access to Affordable, High-Quality Child Care

To add to the challenge of welcoming a new baby into the family, once parents do return to work, they face yet . For many families, child care payments are and . And yet, the median wage for early educators nationally is $13.07 per hour, according to the published by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. 

The math doesn’t work. The cost of sustaining a quality child care system exceeds what families can pay, but still leaves educators underpaid. The solution is publicly funded, universally available child care — something states like are modeling well.

As I take this special time to bond with my new baby and adjust to being a mother of two, my greatest wish is for better family-friendly policies for all American families. Specifically, policies that improve maternal health care and increase access to paid leave and affordable, high-quality child care. If we truly want to encourage and support families in raising children, we must stop asking them to do it alone. These babies will grow up to be our leaders, caregivers and changemakers. The least we can do is ensure they, and their parents, have the support they need to thrive.

The reality of such a high poverty rate among the youngest and most vulnerable Americans is the result of policy choices. Research that it’s not because the U.S. has higher rates of single parenthood or because low-income Americans don’t work hard enough for a decent income. Instead, where other countries make robust investments in government programs, particularly those that benefit parents and children, the U.S. . And yet poverty has been found to have on children’s development and well-being. The stories below expose the result of this disinclination to invest in families with babies and young children — as well as what happens when efforts to do things differently are abruptly abandoned.

Various data sources all illuminate the same trend: homelessness among children under age 6 has been climbing in recent years, driven by a mix of systemic factors, with disturbing consequences for the country’s children.

During the pandemic, universal, free school meals were a lifesaver for parents like Lynnea Hawkins, who no longer had to pull together complicated paperwork and send it in with her son, making him a target for torment. But then Congress ended the program, forcing parents to once again face shame and stigma to participate — or forego free meals for their children altogether.Ěý

Even when Congress passes a new program aimed at helping families afford the basics for their children, it doesn’t always reach them. Erika Marquez’s family was eligible for the new Summer EBT benefits rolled out in 2024 to help parents get through the lean summer months, but her husband couldn’t figure out how to sign up, so they missed out. “It’s just hard when you hear your child say, ‘Mom, my stomach is rumbling,’” she said.

Even long-established programs with solid track records aren’t always safe. At the end of 2023, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, needed more money to stay available to all low-income pregnant people and new parents, but Republicans threatened to break a 25-year track record of fully funding it.Ěý

The often threadbare American safety net leads to some disturbing outcomes, such as the fact that nearly half of our nation’s families are struggling to afford diapers. Some change their children less often than they should to make the diapers they do have last, while others go without diapers at all.Ěý

Some states have taken bold steps to do more to address child poverty. In 2021, Connecticut became the first state to create “baby bonds,” depositing $3,200 in an account for every baby whose birth is covered by Medicaid so that it can accrue interest and create wealth for them later in life.

As President Donald Trump has ramped up deportations, some immigrant students across New York have been too afraid to attend class in person. In response, some school districts have turned to virtual learning, a move the state’s Education Department is sanctioning, officials revealed last week.

“I will tell you in the sense of a crisis, we do have some districts right now … that are taking advantage and providing virtual instruction to our children who are afraid to go to school,” Associate Education Commissioner Elisa Alvarez .

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Alvarez shared with the board a the state Education Department issued in March clarifying that districts have the flexibility to offer online instruction to “students who may be unable or averse to attending school, including during times of political uncertainty.”

The memo further specified schools can tap online learning for immigrant and migrant students “who may be affected and reluctant to attend school in person due to concerns about their personal safety and security.”

Alvarez didn’t disclose how many or which districts were using the approach and for how many students. A state Education Department spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions.

New York City public schools already have virtual options available and aren’t doing anything different for immigrant students fearful of attending school, a spokesperson for the city’s Education Department said.

Still, the disclosure from state officials highlights the ongoing fears some immigrant students are facing four months into the Trump administration and raises fresh questions about how their school experiences are being affected.

Shortly after taking office, Trump barring federal immigration agents from making arrests at “sensitive locations” including schools.

Migrant families staying in New York City shelters expressed acute fears during the week after Trump’s inauguration in January and , likely contributing to lower citywide attendance rates that week (though Mayor Eric Adams later ). Some city educators said they’ve seen attendance for immigrant students rebound since that first week.

City policy prohibits federal law enforcement agents, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from entering schools without a warrant signed by a judge, and Education Department officials have for how to respond.

At the state level, the Attorney General’s office and Education Department issued in March reiterating that state and federal law both compel districts to only permit federal law enforcement to enter schools under very limited circumstances.

Many school leaders have worked hard to communicate those policies and reassure anxious families. And immigration enforcement inside of schools has remained rare.

But some high-profile raids have targeted school-age children, including one in the upstate New York hometown of Trump border czar Tom Homan that swept up three students in the local public schools, . And there have been across the of parents detained by immigration agents right outside schools during drop-off time.

Under those circumstances, virtual learning could give schools a way to keep up some connection with students or families who might otherwise completely disengage.

But some New York City educators said they’re still working hard to convince fearful immigrant students to come to school in person, noting that virtual learning was especially during the COVID pandemic.

Lara Evangelista, the executive director of the Internationals Network, which oversees 17 public schools in the five boroughs catering exclusively to newly arrived immigrant students, said none of her schools have made the “purposeful choice” to engage fearful students through virtual learning.

“Virtual learning for [English Learners] was really challenging during COVID,” she said.

Alan Cheng, the superintendent who oversees the international schools as well as the city’s dedicated virtual schools, said he hasn’t seen any significant changes in enrollment or interest in online learning due to fear of in-person attendance among immigrant students.

And while virtual learning might be able to offer a version of the academic experience of in-person school, it’s harder for it to replicate some of the other services that schools provide families.

“Our schools serve much more than just the academic environment,” Cheng said. “They are really community schools, they provide health care, they provide plenty of other resources.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

A Brief History of the CDCTC

The origins of the CDCTC track back to 1954, when a very limited deduction was introduced for child care expenses. According to a prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), “The provision was intended to recognize the similarity of child care expenses to employee business expenses and provide a limited benefit.” That deduction was converted into the CDCTC in 1976, as mothers were flooding into the labor force and the nation had no publicly-supported child care system for them. There have been periods of reform since then, but the credit has been stuck in the mud for more than two decades: It has been $3,000 for one child and $6,000 for two or more children since 2001. Without adjustment for inflation, , according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. There was one exception, which was a in 2021 which had a significant impact for many working families. (That boost increased the average credit award by more than $1,500 and led to almost 3 million more families claiming it).  

As a result, the average credit per family , meaning their tax liability is reduced by that amount. Reducing the taxes one owes by a few hundred dollars is not nothing, but hardly enough to make much of a dent in , which commonly run in the thousands and can easily tip into five figures.    

The Good

The CDCTC’s strongest suit is how it functions as a broad vehicle to defray child care costs. (Families can claim the CDCTC to offset the cost of care for a spouse or adult dependent with a disability, but CRS notes that it is used “almost exclusively” for child care.) The credit has become especially key for middle-income families since there is no other federal government mechanism to support them with child care costs; all other federal child care assistance is targeted to low- and moderate-income families. Middle-income families , yet they fall into something of a “donut hole” — they often make too much money to qualify for public assistance, but not enough money to be able to comfortably afford programs’ sky-high prices. Absent a strong universal child care system, the CDCTC (or some variation thereof) is necessary to provide some relief.

The CDCTC is also fairly inclusive. While one needs the taxpayer ID of the individual or program used to provide care, the provider can be nearly anyone other than a parent, meaning that it is not limited to licensed care providers.

The Bad

The CDCTC offers important support for many families, but the design is car-with-a-fat-tire clunky. The on claiming the credit is 20 pages long. There are a number of elements including eligibility criteria, extensive rules around earned income, work-related expenses and filing a joint return, and a provider identification test. It is, in short, not an easy credit to claim. Only utilize it.

Moreover, the credit does nothing to support broader systems-building in child care. The fundamental problem is that there is not enough public money in the child care system, so it exists as a failed market with high costs for parents, low pay for providers and scarce supply. The government alleviating a sliver of a families’ expenses during tax season leaves the structural issues completely untouched. On a philosophical level, it keeps child care support in the realm of fiscal tax policy as opposed to being seen as essential social infrastructure.

The Ugly

The CDCTC is strongly regressive, meaning that the benefits flow disproportionately to more affluent families. “Currently, nearly 44% of tax returns that claim the CDCTC come from families with an AGI [adjusted gross income] over $100,000; only 6% of returns from households making under $25,000 a year claim the credit, despite those households accounting for 33% of all returns,” Elise Anderson, a researcher and policy analyst at Capita.

One reason for the huge disparity is that the CDCTC is non-refundable, meaning that a parent needs to owe a particular amount each year in order to receive the full credit. In other words, if a household has no tax liability — which is true for the majority of parents in lower-income households due to the standard deduction and other credits — they don’t get any benefit. 

Finally, the CDCTC categorically excludes stay-at-home parents; families that do not have both parents working outside the home may not claim the credit. The ostensible logic that the CDCTC is a credit to defray tax liability for parents in the labor force doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Families with a stay-at-home parent contribute income taxes by filing jointly, and the labor of many stay-at-home parents enables a spouse to work, particularly if one parent works a job that doesn’t lend itself to regular, predictable hours, like an electrical lineworker or a firefighter who works on wildfires, for example.

What Ideas Are Being Proposed?

There is a reasonable argument to be made to . However, that is not realistically on the table at present. Instead, there are a few different reform options :

The most relevant proposal, due to the profiles of its sponsors, is . The legislation was introduced in early March by a bipartisan group led by Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt and Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, and New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler and California Democratic Rep. Salud Carbajal. It has endorsements from groups not always seen together such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Federation of Teachers. Britt is  to see the legislation folded into the Republicans’ budget reconciliation law. 

If passed, the maximum amount of expenses that a family could claim would increase to $5,000 for one child and $8,000 for two or more children. It would also make the CDCTC partially refundable, meaning that a portion of it would go to families even if they owe no taxes, and lower-income families would have access to a larger credit. In practical terms, a family with one child with an adjusted gross income of $15,000 would be able to claim a credit of $2,500 on $5,000 worth of child care expenses and have that amount refunded if they did not owe taxes. Under the current law, that same family with the same expenses can only claim $1,750 and none of it is refundable. 

Whatever policy, if any, ultimately ends up making its way into the budget reconciliation package, the CDCTC is long overdue for reform. Child care stakeholders would do well to spend some time getting acquainted with the different plans so they can fully engage in the upcoming debates.

Disclosure: Elliot Haspel is a senior fellow at Capita.