Child care during nontraditional hours — including early mornings, evenings, nights and weekends — is a growing need for American families. Flexible care with variable hours from week to week is also in demand.

In many homes across the country, work happens outside of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The best available data, drawn from the past decade, suggest that in some states live with a parent who works nonstandard hours, and that accommodate those schedules — though these figures rely on data collected before the pandemic. These data also indicate that work outside traditional hours is common in families that have lower incomes. 

Expanding access to equitable child care options requires careful attention to the diverse child care needs of working families. For a parent who starts a shift as a nursing assistant at 7 a.m., works overnight as a hotel receptionist or drives for a ride share service as a second job on the weekend, , as many licensed child care programs follow a more conventional schedule. Challenges also exist for parents who work jobs with rotating shifts, who not only require care outside of normal business hours, but also need the hours to be flexible. 

To ensure that working families can thrive, the child care sector needs more public investment in child care settings that offer care during nontraditional hours and increased support for the workforce needed to deliver it. When designing a universal child care system, policymakers must consider the growing population of parents working outside traditional business hours and should incorporate the following three principles.

Include home-based child care providers in policy design. Right now, most child care during nontraditional hours is , rather than by licensed child care providers. In other words, by people families trust who care for children in ways that resemble parental care. This type of arrangement — known as family, friend and neighbor (FFN) care — is in the U.S. child care system. This trend points to both a preference and a gap: Families rely on familiar, home-based care during these hours, yet the supply of licensed child care that is open during these hours simply isn’t there. Building a universal child care system that is responsive to families’ needs will require recruiting and investing in licensed family child care providers and FFN caregivers who operate outside of child care licensing systems. Building policies that include the full range of home-based providers will require creative solutions, such as community-based peer support groups and access to resources and materials related to caring for children. 

Create fair working conditions and compensation for providers who offer care during nontraditional hours. Increasing child care access for working families must prioritize investment in the workforce caring for children during . These providers face some of the in an already strained sector: low pay, unpredictable schedules, on-call demands for families that need last minute child care or need to change hours without notice, and the strain of balancing their own family responsibilities with offering child care. Many FFN caregivers provide child care for their families . Expanding child care options that meet the needs of families working nontraditional hours requires intentional strategies that ensure a livable wage for paid child care workers and compensation for FFN caregivers — many of whom indicate for their work. These approaches must also reflect that the cost of care varies by time of day. 

Right-size standards and regulations to reflect the realities of providers caring for babies and children during nonstandard hours. Finally, quality and regulatory frameworks must evolve to recognize that care at 10 p.m. does not look like care at 10 a.m. Children’s development during nontraditional hours is shaped by like shared meals, bedtime stories and quiet, unstructured time. Systems that measure quality solely through daytime standards risk missing — such as healthy sleep practices and creating calm and comfortable environments — while placing unnecessary burdens on providers. Universal child care systems should offer tailored professional development that reflects the realities of care at night and on weekends — focused less on building lesson plans and more on developing routines, relationships and supporting children through transitions like bedtime or early wake-ups.

As states and cities build universal child care programs, ensuring access to child care beyond standard work hours must be a central goal. By embracing a mixed-delivery system that values all types of care, investing in compensation and professional development, and developing appropriate standards, early adopters of universal child care initiatives can provide an example of how to create policies that meet the needs of all working families.

Constitutions are powerful, both practically and symbolically. After the Civil War, as Congress was debating what defeated Confederate states must do to rejoin the Union, a surprising requirement rose to the top. When Southern states rewrote their constitutions, they were expected to include voting rights — but also . Some years later, in 1881, then-President James Garfield inveighed on the importance of these rights . “The voters of the Union, who make and unmake constitutions, and upon whose will hang the destinies of our governments, can transmit their supreme authority to no successors save the coming generation of voters, who are the sole heirs of sovereign power,” he said. “If that generation comes to its inheritance blinded by ignorance and corrupted by vice, the fall of the Republic will be certain and remediless.” Garfield concluded that, “For the North and South alike there is but one remedy. All the constitutional power of the nation and of the States and all the volunteer forces of the people should be surrendered to meet this danger by the savory influence of universal education.”

By universal education, of course, Garfield was largely excluding the early years — but we now understand how inextricable early childhood experiences are from any desired child outcomes. While more states are moving in the direction of dedicated funding sources for child care (and in 2022, New Mexico even passed a constitutional amendment that committed funding to early education), none have yet tapped the ultimate forcing function: passing a constitutional amendment establishing a right to child care.

In practice, a constitutional right to child care would likely mean that every child in the state would be entitled to — and guaranteed access to — a child care slot. There would be protections in place to ensure that right. For example, every state has a , so if a resident’s local public school district refuses to enroll a child, or tries to charge a fee for enrollment, a parent or guardian can take the district to court — and will likely win. It’s important to note that a hypothetical right to child care does not necessarily mean child care services must be government run, merely government funded; an amendment could be written in a way that maintains a mixed-delivery system including a variety of center- and home-based settings.

There are only a few instances in which early childhood has been addressed by state constitutions, and most of them focus solely on pre-K rather than a comprehensive child care system. Still, they’re notable. The most clear-cut example comes from Florida. As Aaron Loewenberg of the think tank New America explained , “In November 2002, Florida voters voted by a 59 to 41 percent margin to approve a constitutional amendment making their state the first in the nation to grant four-year-olds a state constitutional right to pre-K. The Florida Constitution that, ‘Every four-year old child in Florida shall be provided by the State a high quality pre-kindergarten learning opportunity in the form of an early childhood development and education program which shall be voluntary, high quality, free, and delivered according to professionally accepted standards.’” 

In New Jersey, meanwhile, a decades-long legal battle known as — though not resulting in a right to child care — ended with courts requiring the state to make major pre-K investments in low-income counties as a matter of educational equity. And New Mexico’s 2022 involved dedicating a portion of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to early childhood education. While it was a major win for the state, there’s an important distinction to make: the amendment created a stable funding pathway that powered the 2025 policy which expanded free child care eligibility, but did not establish a right to child care because the state legislature isn’t obligated to fully fund the system or guarantee a slot. 

It’s also important to recognize that establishing a constitutional right to child care doesn’t guarantee that the service is high-quality or that service providers are well compensated. There have been long-running battles in states from to where the courts tell the legislature they need to put more money into the state’s public education system, and the legislature pushes back or refuses. Similarly, Florida’s pre-K amendment has had a rocky translation into practice: as Loewenberg notes, Florida’s program “has fallen short of the lofty goals announced upon the amendment’s passage. The good news is that sixty-eight percent of the state’s four-year-olds were enrolled … during the 2021-2022 school year, making Florida second in the nation when it comes to pre-K access for four-year-olds. However, the state only spends about $2,200 per child, making Florida 43rd out of 46 states when it comes to per pupil pre-K spending,” leading to many quality concerns. Often, the state only covers three to four hours of pre-K per day. 

Still, constitutionally-protected services present a stark contrast to America’s largely pay-to-play child care system in terms of access and cost. A constitutional right is also extraordinarily difficult to remove once enshrined, and when a state establishes this kind of entitlement, it conveys a sense of values that can shape how society perceives an issue. It is perhaps unsurprising that many of the European nations with strong child care infrastructures, from Finland to Germany, have crafted their systems within . Thus, the very debate over whether child care should be a constitutional right could in and of itself help reshape public opinion.

Realistically, amending state constitutions . In many states, the process is arduous and requires action by state legislatures that may be reluctant to obligate themselves to fund a new entitlement. That said, child care champions would do well to consider state constitutional amendments as a long-term strategy. If child care undergirds strong children, strong families and strong communities, then it would call on a great American tradition to assert the need for constitutional authority enshrining the savory influence of universal child care.

“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.

Milo has been coming to work with Wiseman since he was 8 weeks old. He started in the infant classroom, and now he’s in a classroom for 1-year-olds. Wiseman said having Milo in a nearby classroom with teachers she knows and trusts has been a great relief.

“I knew I wouldn’t stop working after I got pregnant and I couldn’t imagine not working, but I also couldn’t imagine putting him in a different space than where I was,” said Wiseman. “It helps to not have to be paying for it.”

Milo’s child care tuition is covered by (CCAP), which was to employees working in a licensed child care program, like Wiseman, the benefit of free child care. Under the program, anyone who works for or more as a licensed child care provider in the state of Kentucky is automatically eligible for full child care assistance, regardless of their total household income. The program was designed to help recruit and retain child care workers amid facing the industry as temporary child care relief funds from the American Rescue Plan were coming to an end.

“The purpose of this program was to increase staffing in child care programs when wage inflation was causing child care providers to leave for more lucrative positions in retail and hospitality industries,” said Sarah Vanover, policy and research director at Kentucky Youth Advocates. Vanover was previously the director of Kentucky’s Division of Child Care and was the force behind expanding CCAP’s traditional income-based subsidies to include early childhood educators. Vanover points out that in the U.S., child care workers make , and that low wages make recruitment and retention of staff a constant struggle. 

Kathy Donelan, the owner of Aunt Kathy’s Child Care & Preschool, knows all too well that would-be hires can easily go to a nearby Amazon warehouse, or even the gas station across the street, and make more money “doing less work” there than working in child care. “It takes a real special person to come here,” Donelan said. Before CCAP covered the child care tuition for her educators, Donelan had always extended the offer for each of her educators to enroll their own children in the program, but the teachers who utilized this benefit would earn a reduced wage. In 2022, when the CCAP assistance kicked in for her teachers, Donelan was able to change her policy so that her employees could get free child care and get their regular salary.

Stephanie Milleck, the director of Aunt Kathy’s, said she saw her salary go up when the CCAP began covering the cost of her daughter’s child care. Both of her kids are now in elementary school, but she is still able to take advantage of the CCAP benefit during the summer when they participate in a summer camp program at Aunt Kathy’s. Milleck works with Donelan on hiring for new positions and says the free child care makes the job more attractive to candidates with young kids and helps with retention. “If it’s a mom of a new baby, we know we will have them for at least five years,” Milleck said. 

New data provided by Beth Fisher from Kentucky’s Division of Child Care shows that as of 2025, 5,510 families have utilized the program that provides free child care for child care providers, and that has included 9,657 children. Another 4,000 child care providers applied for the program, and were found to be income-eligible for child care subsidies for low-wage workers, and Vanover explained they were routed to that program instead. 

For Megan Senn, a preschool teacher in Louisville, Kentucky, this program has been “life changing.” Senn, who has a master’s degree in early childhood education, said she loved teaching but couldn’t make ends meet on the low wages she received when she was a Head Start teacher a decade ago. At the time, she was making less than $30,000 a year working full time, and had to rely on food stamps. In 2016, she moved into a series of management roles at Head Start and later the YMCA, where she oversaw six child care centers, at a significantly higher salary. She was making over $70,000 a year, but Senn said she missed working directly with kids in the classroom. 

It was CCAP that allowed Senn to go back to teaching. She found an early childhood teaching position that would pay her close to $50,000. She estimated that the cost of child care would be between $20,000 to 25,000 a year for her twins. “If you take that off the table, I could take a pay cut and go back to the classroom,” she said. Senn began working at Virginia Chance, an independent school in the Louisville area. When her twins turned 2 years old, CCAP paid the full cost for them to attend preschool there.

Being a teacher and being able to afford to send her own children to the same school she teaches in, has been game-changing,  said Senn. “They get a beautiful education and I don’t have to think about tuition costs and worry if I am bringing in enough money.”

The program is showing results because the math makes sense. Vanover explains that best practice is to have . “If the state pays the child care expense for one of those ten children in order to attract the child care provider, that still opens spots for nine more children who will have parents and caregivers working in the community and providing income tax,” Vanover said. 

have seen the success of Kentucky’s program in retaining child care providers and shoring up their early childhood workforce and are trying to follow suit. In August, Rhode Island launched a based on Kentucky’s model and Vanover said she’s been invited to speak to the Ohio Legislature about setting up a similar program, and has received interest from Utah as well.

While the program has garnered attention for its impact, there are still some areas for improvement. Although the it’s benefitted a majority of licensed child care centers in the state, not all early educators are eligible. Providers who care for their own children in a family child care program that they own are excluded. Vanover explained that the federal laws governing child care payments through Child Care and Development Block Grants from receiving payment to care for their own child, and Kentucky has modeled their program based on those same rules.

But many home providers go into child care because they want to care for their own kids, in addition to those in the community, said Natalie Renew, director of Home Grown, a national collaborative supporting home-based child care providers. “If [owners of] home-based providers could participate in this policy, it would support supply building and encourage more start up,” Renew said. As it stands, the policy is “prejudiced against home-based providers because staff in centers can work in the same place as their children, but those [who run] home-based care cannot.” 

“It’s challenging,” said Vanover, in addressing the ways owners of home-based programs are excluded from the program. She said the legislature is considering modifying the program so that more home-based providers may be able to access the benefit in certain instances, for example, if their child attends a licensed after-care program at another location. 

Some providers have also critiqued the enrollment process. Donelan said four out of her 24 employees are enrolled in CCAP, adding that a fifth staff member has been trying to access the benefit for over a year, but has been unable to do so due to bureaucratic hurdles. One challenge is that although the program doesn’t require income eligibility, applicants must provide extensive paperwork requiring up-to-date paystubs and income verification for all adults living in their home — and any delay in processing the applications requires that new paystubs are submitted. Donelan said she’s had to intervene with CCAP on behalf of teachers during delays. 

Another issue is that providers who have the summer off must withdraw from the program at the end of May and reapply in July. Senn’s school closes during the summer, and she said the reapplication  process takes about two weeks and involves multiple follow up phone calls adding that it can take up to two and a half hours to get through to someone.  

But this July could be the last time Senn needs to reapply since her 4-year-old twins will move into kindergarten.“I am truly thankful and it could bring me to tears how this [program] has just helped me. We have quality teachers that want to be in the classroom but choose not to be because it doesn’t bring enough to the table for their family,” she said.  “It’s heartbreaking because we need it so badly. Every state should have something like this.”

Some states and localities have created a source of dedicated funding, meaning a revenue stream that’s designated specifically to be used for child care, creating more stability for providers and families. And according to a recent published by the Children’s Funding Project (CFP), a national nonprofit that helps states and localities secure money for children’s issues, these funds have helped states navigate the turbulence.

Dedicated funding tackles a simple, yet bedeviling problem: year after year, advocates must fight for state general funds, but it’s frequently a losing battle since too many factors are outside of their control. The health of a state’s economy, the priorities of constantly rotating elected officials, and the actions taken by Congress and the president all shape how much available funding a state has during a given budget cycle — and how it will be divvied up. Since states are legally required to maintain a balanced budget, the squeeze is real. And unfortunately, even states that are very friendly toward early care and education issues will cut them when faced with tough math. 

Dedicated funding sidesteps the general fund scrum. The CFP report explained that “state dedicated funds are distinct streams of public revenue that are set aside for specific purposes, typically dedicated through action by a legislative body, approved by voters via ballot measure, or a combination of these approaches.” Because they have their own built-in power source, they are relatively insulated from the vagaries of state governance.

There’s no singular model for advancing a dedicated fund. The funding source and path to enactment vary by state and locality, depending on what taxes can be levied, how existing revenues may be used, and the political feasibility of potential legislative or ballot measures.

According to the CFP report, 22 states have some version of a dedicated fund to support children and youth — and the rate of adoption has increased in recent years, including at the local level. The report notes that jurisdictions have tapped a range of funding sources including taxes on nicotine, marijuana, gambling, payroll, sales, and capital gains, and, in the case of New Mexico, oil and gas revenues. The mechanism for establishing funds is also diverse, as some states have a fairly low bar for citizen-initiated ballot initiatives, while others don’t allow propositions at all and instead require legislative action. Increasingly, states are that hold the revenues , allocating an annual percentage for early childhood services.

The value and viability of dedicated funding sources was borne out in last month’s elections. In Colorado, for instance, — including a consortium of three ski-heavy mountain counties, and one politically mixed county in northern Colorado — voted for dedicated funding measures via lodging or sales taxes. Those revenues will be especially important as Colorado wrestles with statewide funding challenges that are leading to in many counties.

Other states established their dedicated funding practices years ago. California, for example, has one of the longest-standing dedicated funding sources due to the 1998 a campaign famously spearheaded by filmmaker Rob Reiner. Proposition 10 levied a 50-cent tax on tobacco and the revenues built a network of early childhood programs operating under hub organizations known as the First 5 Initiative.   

Of course, simply establishing a dedicated fund is no panacea. To create a successful solution, the funds have to be adequate. Kentucky, for example, established a fund sourced from its Tobacco Master Settlement agreement, which draws down around $26 million a year. This amount isn’t insignificant, but it’s not enough funding to majorly transform its early care and education system. Where and how the funding flows, and who has a say in deciding that, is also key. 

Additionally, precedent shows there can be a risk of uneven results if the funding source itself is variable, such as tapping so-called “sin taxes.” This has been proven most dramatically in states like California that rely on tobacco taxes. As fewer individuals smoke (which, most would agree is broadly a positive development), the revenues from tobacco taxes have steadily declined, provided through First 5 programs across the state.

As a majority of states face down what is likely to be years of budget pain, dedicated funding sources for early care and education should be a top-tier strategy. State experiences to date suggest that champions would do well to identify funding sources that are both relatively stable and can generate substantial revenues, such as payroll taxes or income taxes for high-earning households. Whatever specific tactics are chosen, the more that child care funding can be taken out of the Hunger Games arena that is state budgeting, the better.

England’s new initiative, which launched Sept. 1, is called “.” It’s a government-funded effort designed to provide 30 hours of free child care a week, 38 weeks out of the year, for working families with children between 9 months and 4 years of age. Unlike the vision of universal systems put forth in Canada and New Mexico, England’s goal is targeted towards low- and middle-income families. To qualify, each working parent in a family must make less than 100,000 pounds a year, which as of the current exchange rate is a little more than $130,000. There is also a minimum income requirement that each parent must meet, which is equivalent to working at least 16 hours a week at .

This isn’t a brand new system, but rather one that builds upon existing policies. For example, as it stands, English families that have a 2-year-old can get if they get “extra support” — in American terms, public assistance or welfare — which they can receive for a number of reasons including their income level or if they’re raising a child with a disability. Additionally, all 3- and 4-year-olds in England get 15 hours of free care as a matter of entitlement, with no eligibility check. In theory, the recent expansion increases access so more families can get more hours of free child care. But in practice, it is proving to be a complicated program that’s leading to unintended consequences related to child care capacity and equitable access for families. 

When it comes to child care supply, the initiative has raised a number of problems. Like the U.S., England is also plagued by , which few experts seem to think this new policy change addresses. In fact, some warn that it may actually be worsening the issue because the free child care promise but the rate the government is funding is lower than the true cost of care. In short, England is running smack into the same wall as many child care reforms in other countries, including America: they aren’t paying enough. For years, child care providers and advocacy groups have that the per-hour reimbursement rate is too low to run sustainable operations, and in many cases providers have been balancing the books by raising the cost of non-subsidized hours. The expansion of free hours may therefore, perversely, damage child care supply by turning program budgets upside-down, and — which will fall at the feet not just of affluent families, but low-income households too. 

The Guardian reported that the initiative has already , including Roo, a civil servant whose family is ineligible for the new program because her partner’s annual income is too high. “Our fees went up by 30% in April,” Roo said in the article, adding that it was an increase of about 330 pounds a month, or about $430. The Guardian goes on to note that some parents may now be incentivized to cut back their hours or otherwise shift their earnings around to get under the 100,000 pound threshold for eligibility. On the other end of the income spectrum, an by New Economics Foundation, a left-leaning British think tank, concluded that just 11% of English families in the lowest income quintile will qualify for the full 30 hours because they’re not meeting the income requirements, meaning they too may have to rely more on the unsubsidized hours that could be getting more expensive.

To add to the cost issues, the up front that families may be asked by their child care providers to pay additional fees for “extras” like meals, diapers and activities — and that they can opt to pay or discuss alternatives. There have been reports of child care programs as a way to try and adapt. Neil Leitch, CEO of the Early Years Alliance, England’s largest early educator membership organization, The Independent that if the funding for the free child care initiative is continually inadequate, “the infrastructure will collapse over a period of time.” He warned: “I can’t say it will be one year or five years, but you can bet your bottom dollar if you don’t give somebody enough money to deliver a service, at some point they stop.”

Many of these challenges track back to the first-order choice to expand child care by having the government cover the cost for a given number of hours per week. That option stands in stark contrast to government-subsidized models in Canada and the Nordic nations, which lean heavily on covering programs’ monthly operational costs in exchange for low fees. It also differs from the approach taken in some American states, including Vermont and New Mexico which rely on a high concentration of voucher-like subsidies. The hours-based model has meager evidence of being effective, and places that have tried it, like New Zealand, similarly .

As the United States grapples with how to evolve its child care policies, there are lessons to be learned from England’s implementation. Political communications expert Anat Shenker-Osorio often her clients to “sell the brownie, not the recipe,” signaling that it’s more effective to hype the outcome, rather than how it will operate, but the recipe also really matters. Without thoughtful policy design to back it up, even a strong idea with the right messaging could end up having limited real-world impact and bad press. 

Moreover, the negative downstream effects of England’s inadequate per-hour funding demonstrates, yet again, that child care cannot be fixed on the cheap, while the convoluted nature of the new system illustrates that layering a new program on top of an existing one can be less effective than coming up with a single comprehensive policy.

That said, it’s important to recognize that multiple things can be true at once. The desire of England’s Labour Party leaders to expand provision of free child care is laudable, and some families are already benefiting mightily. The popularity shows just how much parents are looking for support around care, and leaders shouldn’t be knocked for their policy ambition. At the same time, a poorly developed child care system can end up harming families and providers, and could even turn the public against a good underlying idea. 

It’s early days for England’s new child care initiative, and there’s still time to accept the weaknesses of the underlying policy design and adjust course. In fact, that would be a lesson in and of itself.

Over the years, she’s lobbied her state legislature to secure funding to support children with disabilities and worked with local officials to . When COVID-19 hit, she co-founded the Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Network (WECAN), an advocacy organization focused on increasing public investment in early childhood that grew to include 2,000 child care providers, educators and parents in Wisconsin. 

During COVID, she relied on to keep her doors open, but when those dollars finally dried up for good this past summer, the economics of running a family child care center in rural Wisconsin no longer worked. After 18 years in business, she on Aug. 29, 2025. 

Four days later, she filed to . 

She’s not alone. A number of child care providers have become involved with advocacy efforts, whether working with statehouses to add money for child care to state budgets or collaborating with local governments to coordinate distribution of funds — and some of them have gained the skills, confidence and passion to run for office.

Buoyed by her work organizing providers to take action on child care, Hendrickson said she feels prepared to explain how and why allocations from the state budget affect providers’ livelihood, and why child care plays a critical role in her state’s rural economy. When she goes out into the community to talk with people, from firefighters to farmers, they consistently bring up child care as one of the barriers they face. “It’s coming up organically,” said Hendrickson. “Which is telling me it’s really an issue.”

For BriTanya Brown, owner of a family child care program in Texas, it was organizing two successful ballot measures on child care in her state that motivated her to seek office. The first was a statewide property tax measure designed to offer child care providers a break by waiving property taxes and the second was a in Travis County, Texas to leverage property taxes to make child care more affordable for residents. 

Brown, who began working in child care when she was 13 years old alongside both of her grandmothers who cared for neighborhood children, opened her own program in 2019 after her twins were born. That same year, she began organizing family child care providers to send in stakeholder comments and lobby state legislators on reimbursement rates. “We do the same work as centers and abide by the same rules. We wanted pay parity,” she explained. 

Then, in 2021, Brown created and organized a , an event which has since become the largest one-day work stoppage in child care organizing history. 

Over the past few years, Brown said she hit a number of roadblocks including licensing obstacles and financial challenges with subsidies. She ultimately had to close down her family child care in July of 2025.

“It was devastating,” Brown said, “but that loss became the catalyst for my advocacy. I had seen, up close, how fragile our care infrastructure truly is.”

In August, when Rep. Stan Lambert announced after serving four terms in the Texas Statehouse, Brown jumped at the chance to . “I’m a new face, but I’m a trusted face in my community so I think I really have a chance,” she said. 

***

Child care issues gained political momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the U.S. got a crash course on the importance of child care to its economy, and the sector continued to garner public interest through the 2024 presidential race. by New America found that by 2025, mentions of child care in the media are twice as high, on average, than they were before COVID, with a spike during the 2024 election. As the child care crisis continues to be part of the news cycle and political discourse, “it’s not surprising that the groups would recruit and support people who have a distinct expertise in this area, and would bring a unique and important perspective to the table,” said Kelly Dittmar, the director of research and a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Erin Vilardi, CEO of Vote Run Lead, a nonprofit that recruits and trains women on the campaign trail, said issues surrounding child care are often an impetus for candidates to run. “Half of the women who come through our program are parents,” she said. “The child care debate is one of the top three things we are talking about.” 

Brown and Hendrickson aren’t alone in leveraging their child care backgrounds to run for office. Shaolin Brown operates a registered family child care program from her home and is running this November against a longtime incumbent for Mercer County Clerk in New Jersey, hoping to address child care capacity limits and licensing requirements, which she said can help families know which providers are meeting state safety guidelines. 

And a number of existing public servants have paved the way for these candidates by successfully drawing from their experiences working in early care and education to become legislators. Sen. Patty Murray, for seven years before becoming a state senator and then a U.S. senator. Alabama Sen. Kirk Hatcher is the ; Aletheia McCaskill, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates runs a and has been a licensed family child care provider since 1998; and Rebecca Dow, a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives, founded a child care center, where she worked for ten years before retiring in 2019.

Both Hendrickson and BriTanya Brown said the unique insights they’ve gained into families with young children have helped shape their platforms, and the communities they’ve developed through their child care work have been crucial as they run for office.

“I now have a huge group of people to support me. Most can’t donate, but they can make calls,” Hendrickson said. “This helps me be more inclined to do it. It’s not as scary when you know the people who have your back.”

Hendrickson said the power of her personal story of hardship resonates with voters, regardless of political affiliation. She speaks openly of a time when she had young children at home and her husband lost his job. “We had to rely on food stamps and BadgerCare,” she said, referring to Wisconsin’s state health insurance for low-income families. It was her family child care program that kept her family afloat, and it was also what brought her to advocating for change. 

“People feel ashamed because of the way the system is set up — they feel like failures. But the system has been created so that it doesn’t work for us and it exploits women and young children,” Hendrickson said. 

Running for office, she added, is “part of my journey of being a family child care professional.” 

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.

As leaders in early childhood education whose organizations represent those working across the broad spectrum of care environments, we are united in our support of New Mexico’s approach to addressing the that long has vexed policymakers, providers and parents alike. By designing and funding a system that is “both/and” rather than “either/or,” the state is addressing the needs of families and providers across center-based, home-based, school-based and friend, family, and neighbor (FFN) care settings.

We are also energized by what other states can — and should — learn from New Mexico’s progress. 

The state has taken a series of policy and funding actions over the past six years that have led it to create a for early childhood, approve a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to early education and eventually announce plans to make universal child care a reality. Others can learn lessons from these actions about how to strengthen their own child care systems, whether by making them more robust or even building a path to universal child care, so they can see the benefits in their own backyard.

The reality is that families in the U.S. rely on a fragile child care ecosystem, one that is often cobbled together to reflect each family’s unique needs, schedules and goals. But one thing all families share is a desire for their young children to be safe, happy, healthy and learning — no matter where they are. So a universal child care plan offering true choice is a win for everyone, as New Mexicans soon will experience.

Over the years, a key priority for the state’s policymakers has been increasing the supply of quality child care by supporting educators and caregivers. New Mexico has made advancements including raising wages for early educators and increasing reimbursements rates for those who take subsidies. The universal child care system’s foundation will be built on growing the number of well-compensated, well-prepared, well-supported providers across all settings.

that it needs another 5,000 early learning professionals, and the state pledges to grow the field by, among other things, building on years of investment in the education, preparation and compensation of early childhood educators. The state is committed to meeting parents and providers where they are, including by providing resources and support in multiple languages. The state will also offer low-interest loans for facility expansion; partner with school districts and employers to expand options for working families; launch a campaign to recruit licensed and registered home-based child care providers; make it easier for relative caregivers to participate in state programs; and increase reimbursement rates to programs to reflect the true cost of care, including incentivizing programs that offer a wage scale beginning at $18 per hour.

The bottom line is that there will be multiple entry points and advancement opportunities for early childhood educators along with strong support for caregivers under New Mexico’s new system — and each of those will create more supply of quality care options for babies and young children. 

We believe that this is how universal child care can and should work. Families, regardless of income, have the option to choose the setting that works for them while states strengthen and fund the entire continuum of care and education by prioritizing the people who provide it.

Success in New Mexico will require continued investment from the state legislature, ongoing collaboration between provider and caregiver communities, and efforts to expand access to high-quality child care environments. And it will require a continuation of the kind of advocacy, bold leadership and grassroots activism the state’s early childhood educators, caregivers and families led for years, which helped lead the state to this groundbreaking step.

For too long, families and policymakers have been faced with impossible decisions about whether to prioritize affordable care or quality child care, and how to support providers across a variety of places where early care and education happen. New Mexico’s step aims to put that to an end.

We have every confidence that New Mexico will make it work and demonstrate that there is a path forward in advancing toward universal child care. Every state with a child care crisis — and that’s all of them — can embrace the successes that come from New Mexico’s effort to support early educators and caregivers, which illustrates what’s possible when we come together for children and families.

But recently, the state’s legislature has taken steps aimed at rolling back some of the Beaver State’s early care and education progress — and now it’s on a path toward becoming the canary in the coal mine for child care retrenchment. 

Child care advocates have had their eyes on Oregon for some time as the state has developed and implemented its vision for a comprehensive statewide early childhood system focused on access and equity. In 2016, the state launched Preschool Promise, a statewide publicly funded pre-K system for children from low- and moderate-income families. In 2020, voters in Multnomah county in Portland approved the Preschool for All measure, which is designed to build a universal pre-K system while protecting infant and toddler slots, all funded by a tax on high-earning households in the county.

But Oregon’s notable progress in early childhood is now on rocky ground as the state pulls back on its funding for these systems. 

In June, the Democratic-controlled Oregon Legislature $20 million from Preschool Promise, a 10% decrease that, per Oregon Public Broadcasting, could necessitate cutting slots for up to 640 students. Other early childhood programs unrelated to preschool, such as those focused on early health and parenting education, will also see substantial cuts.

Separately, in June, there was a last-minute attempt by Oregon legislators to slip an amendment on the interaction between state and local tax systems that would have sunset Multnomah County’s universal pre-K system by 2027 by forbidding Multnomah from further collecting the tax. The effort was supported by Oregon’s Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, who that “If Portland does not rebound in the way we think it can, the downstream impacts on our economy will end up costing our most vulnerable and lowest income Oregonians the most.” Specifically, Kotek and others have expressed . In the face of vociferous opposition by Multnomah politicians and advocates, as well as research suggesting those fears were largely unfounded, the effort .

The driving force behind the Preschool Promise cuts and the proposed wind-down of Multnomah’s universal pre-K program is a poor economic forecast that has led to declining projections of corporate taxes, which is the primary way Oregon funds its statewide early childhood programs. As one of the top exporting states in the nation, Oregon’s economy — and corporate tax base — is particularly exposed to effects from the Trump administration’s tariff policies. The legislature was clearly, of Democratic Sen. Lisa Reynolds, “reluctant” to take these actions. 

The big question is whether Oregon is an outlier or a trendsetter. So far, the evidence points toward trendsetter. While few states with specialized funding sources or especially healthy economies, such as New Mexico and Connecticut, have been making major progress in early care and education, many states have begun taking worrying steps to walk back funding in 2025. That’s not surprising. As states begin to of the Republican reconciliation package, which will require more state backfilling of Medicaid and SNAP funding if they want to avoid benefit cuts, they’re looking for ways to cut costs.

For instance, as of January, many major counties in Colorado, including Denver, have instituted for their state’s child care subsidy program due to underfunding and compliance with Biden-era policy changes, which required increased per-child reimbursement rates and lower parent copays. In May and August, respectively, and also enacted subsidy enrollment freezes. In early September, Indiana announced it was by 10% to 35% — based on the age group of children served — to help close a state budget gap, a move which will likely cause many programs to stop accepting children from families that use subsidies. And Arkansas announced that it was going to a regardless of program quality, which would result in an average rate cut of nearly 20% — and the move after widespread protestation.

In each of these cases, there are state eccentricities at play. Colorado, for example, sets subsidy reimbursement rates and parent copays by county, not at the state level, meaning the new federal regulations have caused uneven consequences. In Indiana, critics point to the state’s new school voucher system as a big reason for their budget shortfall. 

The common theme, however, is that child care keeps finding itself on the chopping block despite all the political champions that have been cultivated across the years.

This retreat, even among states that have been leaders in early learning, sends a major warning signal to advocates, philanthropists and policymakers. The reality is that it’s easier to cut an issue area like child care, which while popular with voters, isn’t particularly powerful politically, than to slash services protected constitutionally, like schools, or those with huge constituencies, like health care or business. State legislators may be reluctant to drop the knife on child care, but we can already see that they will.

Ultimately, a federally-funded solution for child care is needed to smooth out state differences, but so long as states are holding the bag, it is important that as they envision, develop and implement solutions, leaders are seeking out ways to protect the progress they make. That might include creative alliances with family policy advocates working on school-aged or elder care, building sustainable child care funding streams like dedicated trust funds and to early care and education. 

Efforts like these can help insulate child care from the vagaries of state budgeting and the chaos of the current administration’s policies. If reliably liberal Oregon, a state that’s prioritized early childhood for years, is starting to make child care cuts, then every state should be preparing to stand firm in the face of the approaching storm. 

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.”

Part of the way he sold it to her, he explained, was by focusing on the time-limited nature of Let’s Grow Kids and the plan to sunset the group in 2025. 

Davis, a longtime philanthropist focused on supporting children and families, believed that investing in early interventions geared toward children ages 0 to 5 would make the biggest impact on creating opportunities for kids in his state. Let’s Grow Kids homed in on an ambitious goal to provide quality child care for every child in Vermont, and Davis created an aggressive timeline to get the job done. 

Richards wasn’t convinced right away, she explained, but after persuasive calls from former Vermont Govs. Peter Shumlin and  Howard Dean, she came aboard and built a team that would drive the state to become the first in the nation to have a near-universal child care system. 

Over the last decade, Let’s Grow Kids raised over $70 million in private philanthropy and grew to a team of 40 staffers. Their efforts built momentum around child care issues and drove progress that supported Act 76, the bill that created Vermont’s near-universal child care program, which was signed into law in 2023 after a . In the two years since Act 76 passed, more than 100 new child care programs have opened, creating over 1,000 spaces for children and 230 new early childhood educator jobs — and an additional 4,000 children in Vermont now qualify for tuition assistance. Let’s Grow Kids was heavily involved with implementing these changes.

On Oct. 3, the organization officially sunset its operations, just as Davis and Richards had planned. 

The time-limited nature of the organization has been critical to its success supporting and implementing legislation, both leaders said, and the wind-down process signals that the state is ready to sustain the changes. 

The Behind-the-Scenes Process of Sunsetting the Organization

In September, Richards addressed a room filled with more than 200 child care advocates in Burlington Vermont to highlight the progress made by Let’s Grow Kids, surface the gaps that remain and to discuss the roll out of the next phase of work, which will be carried out by a group of permanent organizations focused on child care financing, workforce, data and advocacy. 

But the organization began planning for this transition years before it was fully dismantled, building partnerships with the organizations that would move implementation forward, and creating a phase-out plan for the staff. 

“Nothing works without a deadline, it’s human nature,” said Richards. “It sharpens focus and adds accountability. We would always ask, are we on track to win? There wasn’t enough time to pat ourselves on the back.” 

Because Let’s Grow Kids was never intended to be permanent, the team was able to operate at a “faster pace, raise money more effectively, and attract top tier talent” explained Erin Roche, who worked at Let’s Grow Kids for six years before heading up First Children’s Finance, a nonprofit focused on the business development needs of child care centers and providers in Vermont, and one of the organizations picking up the baton from Let’s Grow Kids now. “[Let’s Grow Kids] was inclined to build more infrastructure because they knew they were leaving. They knew they would need support in place for child care businesses they were supporting once they were gone,” said Roche. 

The organization’s expiration date also spurred more philanthropic investment. “We never could have sustained the level of philanthropy [as a permanent group],” said Richards. “Part of the reason we were successful is we could ask for a one year capital gift.” And during the COVID-19 pandemic, the timeline helped the team stay focused on their mission, even as they pivoted to working with child care organizations to receive personal protective equipment supplies and American Rescue Plan Act funds, she said. When the state’s legislative session resumed in 2021, Richards explained that they’d gained a stronger network and the trust of elected officials and child care providers alike.  

Staff, too, have been part of the sunset strategy. By having a declared end date, the staff, including Roche, were inclined to find new roles at various organizations throughout the state. Some former staffers from Let’s Grow Kids now lead Vermont’s National Association of the Education of Young Children. Others work with Roche at First Children’s Finance. One former staff member, Janet McLaughlin, is now the Deputy Commissioner for Vermont’s Department of Children and Families, leading the Child Development Division, which oversees child care policy and implementation in Vermont. 

The final remaining staffers are transitioning to the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network, a 501(c)(4) group tasked with doing the political work necessary to protect the funding provisions in Act 76. 

“Right now we don’t really know the lobbying needs,” said Jerusa Contee, managing director at the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network. “Implementation is still new, so we know we are going to need some help, but we could find out that in a couple of years people have accepted that child care is a core part of the budget.”

While Act 76 brought major changes to the state’s child care infrastructure and increased access to subsidies for many families, the state still doesn’t have what would be considered “universal” child care. Between 80% to 90% of Vermont families with children in child care programs are eligible for subsidies, according to an internal analysis conducted by First Children’s Finance using 2024 Census data, said Roche. “The families it doesn’t capture are spending a lot on child care, and that’s a hardship,” said Roche, who is working on figuring out who is left out of the subsidies and why. At a certain point, she said, it takes more effort to run a program that leaves only a handful of people out than it would to make it fully universal and eliminate the paperwork required to prove eligibility — a step New Mexico recently took. 

Could This Happen Elsewhere? 

Child care remains a among voters across party lines. Polling indicates that younger generations are prioritizing child care that many consider child care a leading workplace benefit. While efforts to improve child care infrastructure at the national level have stalled, advocates are closely watching states that have developed policy and funding solutions, and many are asking what aspects of Vermont’s child care program could be replicated elsewhere. 

Richards said she’s been contacted by people who work on child care policy in other states, including Colorado, Nebraska, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Arkansas, looking to hear about what helped the state pass the landmark bill. In these conversations, Richards holds fast to the idea that the sunset provision is key to running an effective campaign and setting up the necessary infrastructure to carry on implementation and protect the bill. She also points to the Vermont has gathered about how increasing access to child care has impacted the state’s workforce participation and increased tax revenue, and how quality child care has contributed to education factors like kindergarten preparedness. 

After the September event in Burlington, the alumni and remaining Let’s Grow Kids staff gathered outside for a group photo, noting the symbolic pun of the sun setting behind them over Lake Champlain. No one is brazen enough to say “mission accomplished” out loud, Richards said, but both she and Davis acknowledge a deep satisfaction with what they have built. 

As for the immediate future, Richards is taking a month off, then will stay on as the chair of the board for the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network. “I’m tired,” she said, while smiling. “I’ve been running nonstop for the past ten years.”

After Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan in 2021, states were flush with federal funding to help prop the child care sector up. But that money is now all gone, and as Republicans in Congress threaten to pass that could further shrink state budgets, lawmakers are trying to find solutions to the child care crisis that don’t cost money. 

Many have proposed changing the mandated ratios that require a certain number of early educators to care for young kids. have considered rolling back child care regulations, including those governing staff-to-child ratios.

But while these deregulatory bills are common, it’s not a foregone conclusion that they will pass. Advocates in three states have been able to beat back these efforts in the legislative sessions that just wrapped up by mobilizing a wide variety of people to speak up against these proposals and deploying research-backed arguments about child safety and child care supply.

Eliminating Ratios Entirely 

Idaho advocates faced down the most extreme bill. In its original form, would have eliminated all requirements that limit the number of young children an early educator can care for, leaving it up to individual providers. It would have been the first state in the country to take such a step. 

Advocates had very little time to fight back. The bill got fast tracked; there was less than 24 hours’ notice before the first public hearing on it in the House. “You can’t get child care providers and parents there in that amount of time,” said Christine Tiddens, executive director of Idaho Voices for Children, a nonprofit that advocates for child-focused policies, noting that it requires moving work schedules and getting people to cover shifts. The bill sailed through the House.

Eventually, Tiddens said, they were able to put parents and providers in front of lawmakers to warn of the negative consequences. One of those parents was Idaho resident Kelly Emry. On June 10, 2024, she got a panicked call from the home-based child care provider where she had just started sending her 11-week-old son Logan. She dashed to the provider’s home and was told he was dead. The coroner’s report later confirmed he died from asphyxiation. According to Emry, the coroner said the provider put him down for a nap between a rolled up blanket and a pillow and left him there for hours. The provider was caring for 11 kids by herself that day, putting her with state regulations that, at the time, required at least two staff members. 

“It was completely preventable, and that’s what’s so hard for me to come to terms with,” Emry said in a in January.

Emry wasn’t the only one who spoke up. Once the bill got to the Senate, advocates packed the hearing and overflow rooms with several hundred people. Among the 40 people who signed up to testify, 38 opposed the bill. Baby Logan’s uncle spoke, as did pediatricians, fire marshals, nurses, the state police, child welfare experts, child care providers and parents. Lawmakers were flooded with thousands of calls and emails from the opposition. Tiddens made sure every senator was sent the podcast interview with Emry.

The bill the Senate committee by a single vote. Advocates decided to try to stop the worst elements, knowing that the bill was likely to pass in some form. They asked a senator who opposed it to “throw a Hail Mary,” Tiddens said. When the bill came to the Senate floor, he asked for unanimous support to pull it and move it into the amending process. He got it. The original elimination of staff-to-child ratios was stripped out; instead, the bill preserved ratios, albeit higher ones than before. Under previous law, Idaho ranked at No. 41 among all states for how high its ratios were; now it has dropped even further to No. 45.

The victory is “bittersweet,” Tiddens said. She attributes it almost solely to one thing: putting parents, not just businesses and child care providers, in front of lawmakers, which led to the moving account of Logan’s family, still in the midst of raw grief. “How could you listen and not have your heart changed?” Tiddens asked.

Doubling Family Child Care Ratios

Advocates in Maryland have fought back against legislation to loosen staff-to-child ratios twice now. Last year, lawmakers introduced a bill to raise the ratios in family child care settings, but it died thanks to “a lot of advocacy,” said Beth Morrow, director of public policy at the Maryland Family Network, a nonprofit focused on child care. As in Idaho, the American Academy of Pediatrics and fire marshals warned about what would happen in the case of emergencies. Children under 2 years old are “not capable of self-preservation,” Morrow pointed out; they might hide when a fire alarm goes off and can’t evacuate on their own. “If there is an emergency you have to be able to get these kids out,” she said.

The idea returned this year in , this time coupled with looser ratios for center-based care. Family providers are to care for eight children but no more than two under the age of 2; the legislation would have doubled that, allowing providers to watch as many as four children under the age of 1. That was a “nonstarter,” Morrow said. It would also have been the first time that these rules were dictated by lawmakers rather than by the Maryland State Department of Education, which would have been barred from changing them in the future. 

So advocates marshalled research, with the help of national groups including the National Association for the Education of Young Children and Center for Law and Social Policy. They highlighted that there has been that stricter child care regulations lead to reduced supply. Lawmakers seemed moved by the that lower ratios support better health and safety for children.

During the markup session, the chief sponsor amended the bill by striking the language about higher ratios; instead, the version that passed requires the Department of Education to study child care regulations with an eye toward alleviating barriers for providers.

Ratio Increases by Another Name

In Minnesota, lawmakers took a different approach to proposing changes to the number of staff required to care for young children this session. Their legislation avoided mentioning the term “ratios” at all. Instead, the issue was presented as an exemption for in-home child care providers caring for their own children as well. The legislation originally would have exempted as many as three of the providers’ own children from the number they are licensed to watch. “That’s a direct ratio increase, no way around that,” said Clare Sanford, vice president of government and community relations at New Horizon Academy, a child care and preschool provider. “You still have the same number of adults but you’re increasing the number of children that adult is responsible for.”

In later drafts, the number of children who could be exempted kept being reduced. In the end the legislation didn’t get a standalone vote and the language was left out of the final state budget. The argument that Sanford thinks worked the best was that increasing ratios wouldn’t actually increase child care supply. That’s because, as a by NAEYC argues, they will lead to more burnout among providers, which will push them to leave and, in the end, reduce available child care spots.

The fight is far from over. Advocates in all three states expect lawmakers to try to loosen staff-to-child ratios again next session. Tiddens fears that, although Idaho didn’t eliminate ratios, the idea could spread. “Idaho has often been a frontrunner for harmful legislation,” she said. On the whole, more of these laws have been signed than stopped, said Diane Girouard, state policy senior analyst at ChildCare Aware of America. Ratio deregulation bills pop up “in some states every single year,” she said. “This isn’t just unique to red, conservative states. It has happened in blue states, it has happened in purple states.”

Advocates who oppose raising these ratios are formulating responses to the child care crisis that preserve safety standards without requiring state funding. In Maryland, for example, Morrow’s organization helped pass a bill that removes legal barriers to opening and operating family child care programs. The hope is that with more solutions on the table to increase child care supply, states won’t look to options that erode safety standards, such as increasing ratios. 

Tiddens has vowed to fight back. “We’re not going away, and we’re going to show up next session with our own proposal,” she said. Her coalition plans to formulate a bill for next year that “prioritizes child safety at the same time as dealing with the child care shortage,” she said.

Every state has which are outlined in some version of a regulatory handbook. Recently, child care stakeholders on both sides of the political aisle seem to be converging on the idea that focused on streamlining the steps needed to become and stay licensed — while leaving — is one necessary part of a healthy child care ecosystem.

There are two sides of the licensing coin: the number and complexity of requirements that must be met, and the capacity of licensing agencies to process applications and conduct inspections. Take Illinois for example, a state that has been in its child care system. Despite the improvements, ProPublica in January that the state’s licensing requirements present barriers for child care providers:

“Adding to the difficulties in Illinois, prospective [child care] providers say they struggle to navigate a maze of complex requirements largely on their own, leading to delays in opening. They also that are contradictory or outdated. One directs providers to place a blanket in every crib, even though the state prohibits using blankets to reduce the risk of SIDS. The state also directs providers to carry coins on walks so they can use a pay phone in an emergency, a relic [child care program owner] Heather Casner called ‘ridiculous.’

Providers also say their applications can get stuck in limbo for weeks or months, with little explanation for the delays or news about when they’ll be licensed. The supports this claim: For more than a third of applicants, the state misses its 90-day timeline to approve applications.”

The ProPublica story goes on to note that staff shortages at the state level play a role. “In Illinois, offices that oversee child care centers are severely short staffed, with a roughly 20% vacancy rate. On average, each state licensing representative is responsible for about 120 facilities, while .” Similarly, in states where providers may speak multiple languages, a lack of bilingual staff or interpreters can pose a major barrier to the success of regulatory reform.

When it comes to licensing, it is easy to understand how a child care regulation book can get needlessly complex, as they do in many other sectors. At one point, it made sense to have providers carry coins on walks for phone calls; it is likely that there was once an emergency in which that came into play. But regularly updating these regulations is key. To modernize their requirements, some states have been engaged in processes to pull out the regulation book and revisit each line. In a recent published by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, Iowa state child care administrator Ryan Page explained what this process looked like for her team:

“We reviewed each rule related to its purpose,’ Page said. ‘Was it necessary? Was it clearly understood? We reviewed for duplicative requirements and transparency. … We reviewed all rules for simplicity and common sense. For example, if school-age children used the playground during school hours, was it really necessary for monthly child care inspections of the playground or for us to say that the playground can’t be used by the licensed child care program at the same location?’”

United Women’s Empowerment, a nonprofit focused on women’s economic leadership, to make the case for similar licensing evaluation processes in Kansas and Missouri. It is not only red states leading the way; last month, and provided automatic zoning permissions for child care centers in nearly all neighborhoods, meaning providers interested in opening or expanding child care programs do not need to wait for additional local zoning approvals. There is empirical evidence that thoughtful licensing reforms like these can have a real impact. In Boise, a series of reforms in 2023, including consolidating applications and removing a zoning approval step, helped for a family child care license from about three months to 25 days.

That said, there is a crucial distinction between updating licensing requirements and jettisoning health and safety regulations, such as mandatory child-to-adult ratios. The Center for American Process recently “harmful deregulation” and “helpful reform.” , or , which in Idaho this year, exemplifies the former. Similarly, there is no amount of regulatory reform that will ever obviate the need for major, permanent public investment in child care. And, as proven in Illinois, cleaning up the regulation books is not enough to change the lived reality of regulation if state capacity remains inadequate.

Notably, the idea of rethinking child care regulation has crossed party lines. Over the past decade, in child care have mostly come from . And indeed, some right-wing organizations that overregulation is the only thing holding back a functional system. Liberal groups have tended to see these calls as , substituting regulatory reform for a real investment of public money into a sustainable child care system.

Further Reading: Recent Reports on Regulatory Reform in Child Care

• (Buffett Early Childhood Institute, March 2025)
• (Buffett Early Childhood Institute, 2025) 
• (Center for American Progress and National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2025) 
• (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2024)
• (Children’s Equity Project, 2024)
• (Home Grown, 2024)
• (Opportunities Exchange, 2024)

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

People are scared and confused about communication from the Trump administration, or lack thereof, and they’re seeking guidance about how to navigate the whiplash. Most are worried because their grant funds are delayed or inaccessible — and they’re concerned about what that means for the children, families and staff that rely on federal dollars showing up.

The questions and concerns I field weekly span a number of issues including funding, communications, meeting the needs of children and families and recently, how to contact federal Head Start staff when half the workforce has been cut. 

Here are some recent inquiries I received, edited for clarity: 

I can’t draw down funds and need to make payroll in two days. My regional office closed. Can someone help me get in touch with the Office of Head Start?
—A Head Start director

My grant funds are three months late. I need to tell parents and staff not to come on Monday if I don’t hear something soon. What should I do?
—A Head Start director

A program’s website has banned words, and they received a monitoring letter. How do I know which words are now prohibited?
—A state Head Start association director

Our grant award finally came, but only half of the funds. Why? Will I have to close in six months?
—A Head Start director

My collective bargaining agreement requires me to give two weeks’ notice before laying off staff and there’s no word on my grant. I know I need to hand out pink slips but I will lose staff if I do. What should I do?
—A Head Start director

The law requires me to serve children with disabilities, but now I’m told training on the Americans with Disabilities Act is prohibited. What do I do to protect children with disabilities?
—A Head Start regional association director

Head Start History

Head Start is a nationwide early childhood development program that serves . Designed by child development experts in the 1960s, the original goal was to provide children in impoverished communities with skills to prepare them for school. At the time, preschool was uncommon: . Head Start revolutionized early childhood education, inspiring many states and communities to invest in public preschool programs. Over the past 30 years, the program has evolved to serve low-income families with children 0 to 5 years old. Head Start continues to take a holistic approach to school readiness, offering developmental screenings, nutritious meals and snacks, medical and dental care, and resources to help parents find and maintain employment. 

Until Jan. 20 at 11:59 a.m., I was the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). That’s an unnecessarily long way of saying that a core part of my job was overseeing the Head Start program, so I’ve seen firsthand how the program sets children up for success.

After four years in government, my plan was to spend more time with my own two children and take a break. That lasted about a week. On the morning of Jan. 28, I received a call from a Congressional staffer who was fielding calls from Head Start programs — Head Start funds were frozen — and it was creating chaos. A deluge of frantic calls followed. Program directors that they could not access funds in the that allows them to pay their staff, purchase supplies, and pay their bills. Concerned they wouldn’t be able to make ends meet, some site leaders started . Teachers panicked about potential layoffs, and staff about proposed budget cuts.

Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of the attacks that the Trump administration would launch on Head Start in its first 100 days. 

Federal staff responsible for administering the program were , leaving the Office of Head Start gutted. Layoffs included the sudden closure of around the country that interface with local programs. Grant awards arrived late, after weeks or months of silence. Program leaders went to draw down funds already approved by HHS only to receive to justify their spending. The Administration vague guidance prohibiting funds for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives with no explanation as to what that might include. And then, clearly outlined what many had suspected all along: the Trump administration planned to .

These actions had immediate impacts. That’s because Head Start uses a , meaning that the federal government awards dollars to community organizations, municipal governments and school districts that run local  programs. Since these funds must be used to directly serve children and families, there is no room for error. 

In April, for example, a program in Sunnyside, Washington, closed down after months of waiting for federal funds over a month after Congress had approved funds for Head Start. When a program closes, the impact ripples through the community. Children lose access to early learning, nutrition and health care. Parents lose access to child care. Staff go without pay. Local business vendors lose contracts for services like transportation, facility maintenance and food operations. 

The Washington program is the starkest example of the detrimental impact the Trump administration is having on Head Start, but the damage doesn’t end there.

Every time I speak with Head Start staff, the stress is palpable. They tell me that they’re living month-to-month, hoping their grants come through, carrying the weight of knowing that they may have to close their doors, and understanding all too well what that will mean for the children they serve. They reach out asking questions like: “Who will take care of the children while their parents are at work if we close?” “Where will the children get their meals?” “How will families navigate health care?” They lament over how difficult it is to calm the fears of staff and parents when they’re feeling anxious themselves. They share fears about not receiving a response to the desperate messages they are sending to a nameless email address at HHS. And they explain how they nervously check headlines during their lunch breaks, eager for news about whether Head Start is officially on the chopping block.

This is not the first time that Head Start has come under threat. While other federal programs designed to address poverty have fallen by the wayside, Head Start has survived regular attempts to target it. My own career began in 2003, when I was an intern at the National Head Start Association while then-President George W. Bush . That effort was stymied by a groundswell of opposition. More than 20 years later, my then-boss Joel Ryan, who leads the Washington State Head Start Association, is the lead plaintiff in a , alleging that the agency is . Once you’re part of the army fighting for Head Start, you don’t leave.

Over the past few months, I’ve seen the grit, determination and commitment of the community ready to fight once again. Head Start is more than a program. It’s a world view that has set the gold standard for early childhood education — one that asserts that parents are their child’s first and most important teachers; that a young child’s physical, cognitive and emotional development are inextricably linked and must be simultaneously supported; and that children with disabilities rightfully belong in classrooms with their peers and with supports to allow them to fully participate. 

That world view is critical to Head Start’s durability because it drives people not only to work for the program, but to defend it when it comes under scrutiny. 

The people who work at Head Start — from classroom teachers to federal staff — are among the most committed public servants I’ve met throughout my career. They are driven by their belief that the model provides millions of children with opportunities they would not otherwise have. And thebacks it up. Children who attend Head Start compared to children from similar backgrounds who do not.

It’s that belief that drives teachers and staff to stay, even if it means living with the reality that changes in political headwinds could put their career in jeopardy. It’s why leaders in state Head Start membership associations are working into the wee hours readying an advocacy campaign. It’s why federal staff spent the hours they had after learning they would be terminated desperately trying to transfer their files to someone else to pick up the work before access was cut off.

Head Start endures because it has inspired generations of children, parents, teachers and advocates to commit to keeping the promise of the program for another generation. 

Their work might be paying off. More recently, there are signals that the Trump administration could be backing off of their proposal to eliminate Head Start. The so-called . After widespread alarm, most programs anticipating grant awards on May 1 received their funds. 

Yet, there are constant reminders that Head Start is not yet out of the woods. Some programs inexplicably received only part of their funds. The threat of vague language prohibiting DEI lingers over programs that wonder if they will be the next target. No one knows how the Office of Head Start will continue to administer the program with half of its staff. 

This chaos is far from over, but the Head Start community is resilient and ready to fight for a program that has offered millions of children the opportunity for a better life.

While direct actions — a form of activism that uses strikes or public demonstrations — by child care providers remain relatively rare in the U.S., it may be an increasingly important arrow in the quiver when fighting for the system children, parents and providers need and deserve.

At issue in Wisconsin is the fate of the state’s child care stabilization fund, known as . Wisconsin is states that doesn’t fund child care, relying instead entirely on . That temporarily changed during the pandemic, when providers began receiving regular payments through Child Care Counts that allowed them to maintain operations and kept parent fees from spiking. With these pandemic funds drying up, Gov. Tony Evers $442 million over two years to continue the fund, but last week the Republican-controlled joint finance committee .

If this funding ends, there will be massive consequences for children, families and providers, which is one reason providers are engaging in such an unprecedented action. As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel , “A quarter of child care providers are more likely to close without further funding from Child Care Counts, and those that remain could be forced to raise their rates, released April 10 by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.” This does not appear to be hyperbolic: funding reductions to Child Care Counts over the past few years have already caused providers to increase fees and to have more difficulty hiring qualified staff.

Providers have seemingly had enough. Hendrickson stated in a that, “While politicians negotiate over our funding and our lives, Wisconsin working families are once again left without. We’ve done everything we were told to do. We called. We showed up. We shared our stories. And still, lawmakers voted to cut child care from the budget. No plan. No replacement. No respect. We’ve had enough and we are drawing the line.” Providers across the state , and according to Hendrickson, some will remain closed until the legislature guarantees they’ll restore the child care funding.

Single day child care protests are increasingly common. These have been seen in and , and they have proven useful at garnering media attention — in fact, the 2020 Irish protest with making child care a major campaign issue that year. These have also occurred regionally in the U.S.; for example, in Connecticut in 2022, providers organized a “,” which became a landmark event that sparked other communities to follow suit via the now national Day Without Child Care. 

The Wisconsin protest sets itself apart from these one-day actions though, in that the intention is sustaining activism until the state legislature meets a specific demand.

Perhaps the most notable modern example of a sustained child care work stoppage comes from Germany. In 2015, German child care staff across the country went on strike for four weeks to protest their low wages, marking one of the nation’s largest post-reunification labor actions and . (The strike ended with a modest salary increase.) Similarly, in 2004, Scotland of 5,000 child care educators that dragged on, in some localities, for more than three months. 

One structural element that has made direct child care actions in the U.S. less common than in other nations is the fact that there is less government involvement to begin with. Both German and Scottish child care workers are largely hired by — and have their wages set by — municipalities, and most workers belong to a labor union. In the highly privatized and fragmented American system, and the divisions between employers and employees can be fuzzier; in fact, in many cases it is the owners of U.S. child care programs that are protesting. However, both Connecticut and now Wisconsin have been able to tie their demands to state legislative action, with the presence or lack of state funds for child care acting as a sort of stand-in for collective bargaining. 

That said, the Wisconsin providers face challenges ahead. While the movement has received support from the community organizing group Community Change, the providers are not unionized. There is no standing strike fund, and for programs operating on thin margins, every day the doors are closed poses a significant loss of revenue. And of course, the participants would much rather be providing care and learning to the children in their programs. Participating in sustained closures is emotionally fraught. For early educators, it’s difficult to deprive families of a vital service they rely on. For families who will feel the impact, it’s expected that reactions will vary, but looking at Connecticut as an example, parents made it clear that given the choice between a temporary stoppage and permanent closure, reduced quality, or unaffordable fee hikes, they will generally stand alongside their child care providers.

Child care providers in the U.S. have long advocated passionately for more support, but have rarely engaged in prolonged protests. In Wisconsin, we’re about to find out whether sustained activism is a tool that can sway policymakers.

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.

Midway between Nashville and Atlanta, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, makes original use of a resource that other communities possess in abundance but fail to capitalize on: empty classrooms in public schools. 

Arising two decades ago from one principal’s creative approach, micro-centers are child care centers for the children of school teachers and other staff. The city’s 12 micro-centers serve children 6 weeks old through 4 years old, when they can go to pre-kindergarten.

“It’s almost like a deconstructed child care center,” says Louise Stoney of , a nonprofit focused on improving child care business models. Stoney says she’s working with several states that are trying to replicate the model.

Origin Story

In the early 2000s, school principal Jill Levine noticed that she was losing a lot of her bright young teachers when they had children. So she converted an empty classroom into an informal child care space.

To make sure the center was not an insurance risk, Levine reached out to the late Phil Acord of , a social services organization with roots in the 19th century. Acord worked with Tennessee’s Department of Human Services, which handles licensing. The agency agreed to license these sites not as child care centers but as family child care “homes,” which has a specific legal definition. Acord also found an insurance agent to add an inexpensive rider to the schools’ existing policies.

Katie Harbison, who now runs the initiative for Chambliss, says, “We’re lucky that we’re one of the states that doesn’t have regulations that require that license to only be in a place where a person lives.” Her latest campaign involves expanding beyond schools into businesses, hospitals and other workplaces, a step that requires negotiating with state fire marshals about these nontraditional facilities.

“Licensing is rigid and unforgiving,” says Stoney. “States tend to license centers with a huge telephone book of standards, while licensing homes with this really thin folder of nothing. And micro-centers sit in between.”

Cost Savings and More

Even before the pandemic, . Micro-centers alleviate some of the biggest pain points. The host school gives them the space for free and covers utilities, maintenance and janitorial services. Chambliss pays for teachers, technology, supplies and insurance.

“Their wages are better and their parent fees are lower,” explains Stoney, “because they’re not padded by any facilities costs or overhead cost.”

The benefits of micro-centers go beyond the financial efficiencies, Harbison explains: “Parents working in the schools can drop off their children and pay visits during lunch breaks or for nursing. And the arrangement also fosters community within the school, with staff often helping each other with pickup duties.” And since the parents are school employees, their work schedules naturally harmonize with those of their child care providers.

Best of all, micro-centers are a vital employment benefit, supporting the school system’s recruitment and retention goals.

A Nationwide Opportunity

Aaron Lowenberg and Elliot Haspel the dynamics around the country that make the present moment ripe for solutions such as micro-centers, writing: 

“With districts looking to save costs by closing underutilized elementary school buildings yet still incurring the costs of maintaining those facilities, child care providers struggling to afford rising commercial rents, and families in dire need of more child care options, it makes sense to consider allowing child care providers to make use of these existing school buildings.”

Lowenberg and Haspel focus on Missoula, Montana, where population growth has stalled. In Chattanooga, Harbison notes, the situation is somewhat different, as the population is swelling, which leads to a shrinking pool of empty classrooms and long waitlists for infant and toddler spots.

“People are moving here for quality of life and affordability,” she says. “Some are remote workers.” When building a new school, the district tries to reserve one classroom for child care, but, increasingly, enrollment outpaces expectations. “We sometimes have to leave a school and go to another one,” she says.

Further, after weathering the pandemic with their workforce largely intact, Chambliss is now grappling with a low local unemployment rate, which means more job openings with less responsibility and higher pay.

The Network Behind Micro-Centers

Beyond economic and population fluctuations, it’s that fosters a project like micro-centers. “Chattanooga is known for public-private partnerships,” says Harbison. “Government, philanthropists and companies work together. We’ve had some pretty major projects through blending of public and private dollars, including redoing the waterfront and building a public aquarium.” 

In particular, Harbison singles out , a backbone organization for the community focused on literacy and career pathways, as well as an early childhood effort called that brings together 30 organizations. Chattanooga 2.0’s Smart City Venture Fund, a private social venture capital fund, helps direct local investments. She also credits the , the and .

Seeking viable workarounds. Remaining flexible. And enlisting collaborators. Every city is different, but these are the principles that generate and sustain solutions.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the process for opening a child care center in a Tennessee school. Principal Jill Levine had permission to open a center at her school, building on a process used by another school.

Abrupt closures are the reality for far too many early care and education programs. In recent months, Guidepost Montessori, a network of more than 130 Montessori-inspired child care programs and schools serving children ages birth to 18, more than 16 sites and to financial struggles and an inability to pay rent; in each of these cases, parents and educators have gotten at most a month’s notice. Some received an email the night before landlords changed the locks.

The short-notice aspect of child care closures is not limited to for-profit chains. Independent, community-based, and nonprofit programs also frequently provide meager notice. In February, Thrive Early Learning Academy, an independent center near San Antonio, Texas with zero warning, with the owner writing that due to staffing challenges, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the temporary closure of Thrive, effective immediately.” Last year, Rockford Day Nursery, a 100-year-old center in Illinois had a , as did in the small South Carolina town of Aynor.

A sudden child care closure can create immense stress for parents and staff. In 2024, Molly Dickens, a stress physiologist, co-authored an with reproductive psychiatrist Lucy Hutner in which the pair recounted the story of Julia Sachdev, a mother of two young children who got an email that her kids’ preschool was closing in a month. They wrote: “‘It was so stressful,’ reflected Ms. Sachdev. ‘There was this suffocating anxiety that ruled my day. I couldn’t concentrate on other things. It kept me up at night.’” Dickens and Hutner noted the negative effects of chronic stress on parents and children, and also cited research that — a state of insecure and unreliable child care — “has been linked to negative mental health outcomes for mothers for at least six years afterward.” They underscored that “Unpredictability itself is a source of stress. Even when parents manage to secure care for their children, it can be unreliable, and they never know when it might go away.” 

The reasons for rapid child care closures vary. In some cases, as with Guidepost, it may be financial problems or other business failures. In other cases, as with Thrive Learning Academy, a lack of staffing means the program cannot legally operate. And in others, circumstances may be beyond a program’s control, as when a landlord .

While it is instructive to compare the closure of child care programs to the closure of public schools, it’s important to recognize that this is a case where the lack of a public system really rears its head. A public school closure typically involves a months- to years-long process that is and requires a large amount of meetings and discussion. That’s not the case for most child care programs. The government cannot force a private business or even a nonprofit to stay open indefinitely, and the overwhelming majority of child care programs in the U.S. fall . That doesn’t mean, however, that there are no public policy tools.

First, it’s important to note that if a private business that serves a social function is closing, the government often requires reasonable notice. Banks are a good example: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation legally requires banks to prior to closing a branch. Skilled nursing facilities, too, at least 60 days notice and a plan for relocating residents, as mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Another challenge is that unlike other industries, there is no rescue mechanism for failing early care and education programs — but there could be. When systemically important companies are risking closure, the government often steps in. For example, when big financial institutions and car companies were flailing during the 2008 fiscal crisis, the federal government provided a . When a public school district’s financial situation is dire enough, it typically , meaning the state takes over governing authority in exchange for filling the funding gap, as has happened in districts such as and . In short, if the social impact of a given service failing is significant enough, the compelling public interest for government intervention is well-established.

While a mom-and-pop child care center or even a medium-sized chain like Guidepost Montessori doesn’t rise to the level of systemic importance as a General Motors, they provide critical support to families and children, and when one of them closes, it . Yet there’s currently no public recourse whatsoever in child care. There is no established mechanism for Colorado or its cities, for instance, to step in and purchase the shuttering Guidepost facilities at a discount, turning their operations over to a trusted nonprofit or community-based organization. This is an area ripe for policy entrepreneurship — surely some type of mechanism such as a trust fund or loan fund could be established that would keep the centers’ doors open, even if the ownership changes hands.

There are other potential policy actions. While the difference between 30, 60 or 90 days isn’t massive when you’re talking about the supply scarcity that marks child care, states requiring a more robust amount of notice to families and staff would at least offer more breathing room to seek alternative arrangements. And if there were more protections in place to ensure that landlords leasing their spaces to child care programs had to give more notice if they planned not to renew — say 6 months — that could offer program leaders a more reasonable runway to find a solution. 

Finally, program failures do not happen out of the blue. There are typically early warning signals along the way. If states established — or improved — the lines of communication with child care programs and offered guidelines or requirements around how to share these warning signals sooner, there would be more time for states to implement supportive strategies to help struggling providers.

For example, regulations could be put in place to require licensed programs to alert the state when a staffing shortage reaches a critical level in which one or two more departures will drop them below the legal minimum, forcing a closure of classrooms or the entire site. For this issue, states might consider having an “emergency pool” of retired directors and educators who could be called on to maintain operations until the situation is resolved. Similarly, large chain programs could be required to share audited financial statements with the state on an annual basis so that the state has a sense of their general financial health and risk of collapse, given the outsize impact of multisite closures. 

There are various levers to pull, but the status quo is untenable and policy change is needed.

Families and child care educators deserve the confidence and peace of mind that the rug is not going to be suddenly pulled out from under them, and young children deserve maximum caregiver stability that promotes their healthy development. We’ve allowed sudden closures to be a fact of life in the U.S. child care system for far too long. That’s a policy choice; it’s time to make a different one.

“I got a question [about] whether or not ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] can look through your purse. I got a question about kids carrying their documents. One parent asked, if she elected a standby guardian and if that guardian took the child home, whether that would keep [her] kid from getting deported.” 

Veronica Thronson, a law professor and the director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Michigan State University Law School is also making herself available to answer legal questions. She’s conducted a number of trainings at the , a local nonprofit supporting refugees in Michigan, and was a panelist on a recent Migration Policy Institute webinar about issues affecting immigrant families and early childhood systems. 

Thronson says Trump’s (regardless of its ) unleashed a flood of phone calls from clinic clients with children. “They were saying they heard from a neighbor that their kid is not a citizen anymore, and so we have spent a lot of time saying, ‘No, no, no, you are safe. Your child is a U.S. citizen’.” 

The clinic Thronson leads is for second- and third-year law students who serve clients in East Lansing and surrounding areas who come from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and her own home country of Guatemala.

“We usually have them come to our office to meet with us,” she explains, “but now we’re saying, ‘No, we’re coming to you’ so they don’t risk getting stopped along the way because they may not have a driver’s license or they may not have a very good car that gets stuck in the middle of the road. We minimize the risk of them getting encountered by ICE.” Many of her students are immigrants themselves or are related to immigrants. “They are worried about enforcement against their own families,” she adds. 

To date, there have been some , but no confirmed raids on child care centers. 

Thronson says, “I’m really hoping that ICE has enough on their hands, targeting people who are serving a criminal sentence or people who have prior orders of removal. That gives us a chance to prepare the community.” 

Immigration advocates and legal experts have differing opinions about the severity of the threat, but there are some consistent themes in how they are approaching the moment. 

Supporting Early Educators In Understanding The Rights of Children and Their Families 

Key advocacy organizations, including (CLASP) and the (NILC) are providing — and regularly updating — resources for child care educators. According to Suma Setty, senior policy analyst at CLASP, about one in five U.S. child care providers is an immigrant. “Unless something drastic happens, there are certain things that will remain true, like your Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights,” she says, referring to protection against arbitrary arrest and self-incrimination, respectively. “All people have a constitutional right to remain silent.”

She adds that child care providers and early educators should understand that the only warrants they must honor are those signed by a judge. 

Helping Child Care Programs Make a Plan

Setty suggests that child care programs should put protocols in place to protect staff and families and that that will help them ease the anxiety. “They need to know what to do in a situation that might be scary and intimidating, such as if ICE agents show up at their door,” she notes.

CLASP provides for how early childhood programs can create “safe space” policies to protect young children and their families. These policies empower staff to establish roles and responsibilities, including how to interact with federal immigration agents, how to minimize children’s learning and routines and how to notify parents about the presence of immigration agents. 

Ellefson-Porras says families also have a role. “Check to make sure all your paperwork with the preschool is up to date,” she recommends. “Who is authorized to pick up your child?” In some cases, she tells parents and caregivers to consider having someone else pick up their child and drop them off at school.

Finding Developmentally Appropriate Ways to Acknowledge the Threat

“The last thing you want is to scare a child,” asserts Thronson. “They are already afraid. Many children we represent have no idea they have crossed the border. They have no idea what immigration is. Why are we going to instill fear in them? At the same time, she notes, it’s very important to convey the message to kids: Do not open the door.” She advises parents to update their emergency contact to designate another person to pick up their children in case they get caught up in an ICE raid.  

Consequences for the Sector — and for Children

Setty notes that the threat of increased immigration enforcement has already caused damage. There have been reports of decreased attendance, which could harm child development as well as jeopardize funding. “There’s a concern that this will decimate an already-precarious industry,” she says. “If we’re talking about a lot of people disenrolling from Head Start or from other child care programs, it’s going to threaten child care supply.”

The situation is changing every day. “Something that might be relevant and apply now might not be relevant tomorrow,” says Setty. “The whole tactic of the Trump administration is to cause panic and anxiety and fear, but it’s important for folks to stay abreast of everything.” 

Resources for Early Educators and Families:

• (American Immigration Lawyer Association)
• (Child Thrive Action Network)
• (The Center for Law and Social Policy)
• (Catholic Legal Immigration Network)
• (Immigration Legal Resource Center)
• () (Migration Policy Institute)

As some child care programs kept their doors open, others  to . With parents pulling children out of early learning programs because of health concerns, financial constraints and other pressures, many providers suffered tuition losses and low enrollment, while struggling with the . By March 2021, nearly 16,000 child care programs had shuttered, according to a report from Child Care Aware of America, which was based on data from 37 states. Some experts  that the number was closer to  if all states were accounted for. Much of the . Additionally, without care for their children, many mothers left their jobs — a phenomenon some economists refer to as a “shecession.”

The pandemic temporarily devastated the field, but five years later, a number of these effects seem to . There are now slightly more  than before the pandemic, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. Mothers with young children have in record numbers. What has endured is a sense among the public and lawmakers that affordable, accessible child care is essential to a healthy economy. 

But experts say that such good-on-paper developments can cloud a more nuanced story. To better understand the ways in which COVID-19 radically altered child care and early learning in the U.S., I interviewed five experts about what they consider key to the legacy of the pandemic on the field. Here’s what they shared, edited and organized for length and clarity.  

Julie Kashen

Julie Kashen is a longtime child care advocate and the director of women’s economic justice at The Century Foundation, where she conducts research on families, caregiving, economic mobility and women’s labor participation.

The pandemic showed elected officials how much the public cares about child care.

The pandemic shone a spotlight on a challenge that many of us knew had been there all along. For so long, people had bought into [a] false argument that child care and early learning are an individual problem for each family to solve on their own. Seeing the impact of school and child care closings on parents and the workforce around the whole country, and at the same time [changed that]. 

CEOs and employers were finally understanding the [child care] challenges parents face. There was increased media attention on the issue because it was so prevalent, and also more reporters had firsthand experience with it. So as members of Congress got ready to put money into the airline industry, the restaurant industry and the retail industry — sectors that Congress has long been comfortable bailing out — we were able to make the case that child care is a sector that’s impacted, and that also impacts all those other sectors, and therefore needs investment.  

It quickly became clear that this was not being treated as a partisan issue. Leaders on both sides began stepping up to say, “child care needs to be part of our pandemic relief package,” and that led to significant investments. 

Now more elected officials are eager to be child care champions. They understand that they need to have a position and perspective on child care, that leading on child care is a popular thing to do. 

Mary Cheng

Mary Cheng is the director of childhood development services at the Chinese-American Planning Council, which has several early childhood centers and after school programs serving low-income families in New York City.

We’re seeing a lot more children with a limited attention span and families depend on us even more than before.

Providers feel exhausted by everything that’s been happening. I feel like they haven’t had a full break since COVID hit. 

There has been a definite drop in enrollment in our programs due to the pandemic, but [we now serve] a higher number of [children with] special needs. In our classrooms, like 50% [of the children] need services such as early intervention or speech and occupational therapy. 

I think parents were scared to bring them out for services [during the pandemic]. But it also has to do with the way that kids were being occupied at home. If parents were working remotely, they weren’t paying attention to children the same way. They were giving them screens to keep them quiet. Today, a lot of the children want that instant gratification. We’re seeing a lot more children with a limited attention span.

We’re also finding it harder to get parents to the table to work with us. When people are cornered and feel like they have no choices, and no connection, [the way they did during the pandemic], they close up. A lot of families are still not willing to gather together the same way as before, so there isn’t that same family support or peer system that they need. A lot of families don’t feel like there are systems in place to really support them. They want us to do it all.

Chris Herbst

Chris Herbst is a professor at Arizona State University focused on the economics of child care and early childhood education.

The child care workforce is like a leaf blowing in the wind. It’s very sensitive because it is inextricably linked to the larger labor market.

Prior to COVID-19 not a lot of child care research was focused on the workforce. Now, a lot is very much focused on the workforce. Pretty much every [recent] paper I’ve written has focused in some way on , documenting its , or how public policies — whether it’s the  or immigration enforcement — have affected it. 

The child care workforce is a bit like a leaf blowing in the wind. It’s very sensitive to all kinds of changes in the policy and economic environment because it is inextricably linked to the larger labor market. When there are shocks to the larger labor market — like if lots of  — that has obvious implications for the child care sector. 

The shocking piece of news coming out of the pandemic that keeps me coming back to the workforce is how hard it has been for child care providers to hire and keep teachers, never mind highly qualified teachers. In the wake of the pandemic, the pay in the low wage labor market really started to increase, but child care providers couldn’t keep up, so it made hiring and retaining highly qualified staff even more difficult, and you continue to hear that to this very day. 

Erica Phillips

Erica Phillips is the executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care, a non-profit dedicated to promoting high quality child care by strengthening the profession of family child care. 

The pandemic showed the world how important family child care is.

Before the pandemic, many home-based providers felt invisible and not supported. The pandemic gave a window into how important they are. Family child care providers were lauded as heroes for staying open when many child care centers closed, and a lot of parents were interested in their small size.

Some advocates leveraged that spotlight to talk about the systemic changes needed to support home-based child care. [When COVID funding became available to stabilize the child care sector,] a lot of family child care programs entered the public funding system for the first time. More began engaging with their state child care registries to access technical assistance or grants. In several states, family child care providers  and were able to collectively bargain, resulting in  or  or . 

We continue to see a significant hunger and momentum for ensuring that our sector is respected and supported. But as COVID funding has dried up, many family child care providers are beginning to feel forgotten. There are states that have invested in their early education systems who have been inclusive of family child care. And then there are states where the providers feel like they are trying to shut down family child care.  

The sentiment we hear from family child care is, “We are essential for a lifetime, not just for a pandemic.”  

Steven Barnett

Steven Barnett is founder and senior co-director of Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), which publishes an annual report tracking preschool policies, funding and enrollment in the U.S.

Because of the pandemic, we began collecting desperately needed data that our country had not been monitoring before.

During the pandemic, kids weren’t in classrooms so studies in classrooms were completely disrupted. A lot of data collection was also delayed. On the flip side,  of a representative sample of 1,000 families of 3-5 year olds on their preschool learning activities, including home learning activities. We wanted to see the impacts of this moment on kids’ learning activities, because a bunch of them were not going to preschool, they were getting this remote stuff — and who knows how well that was working. We started in the spring of the pandemic and we’ve been doing it every year since.  

Our data show that parents read less to their kids during the pandemic. It was like, “I’ve had that kid all day while I’m working at home, and we’re both too beat to do this.” 

Eventually, the reading bounced back up, but it never came back to where it was. Even in the spring of 2020, before people had really been wrung out by the pandemic, the . 

We [also] found that children’s social emotional development tanked during the pandemic. [Some] behavior problems and mental health issues seem to have receded, but the prosocial — how well do you get along with other kids part — hasn’t come back to where it was before. 

. That’s a problem. If kids are outdoors less, and on screens more, then wouldn’t we think they would have fewer experiences playing with other kids? These aren’t things we had been monitoring nationally, and we know they have consequences for kids’ learning and development. We plan to continue this work. 

The closure of a child care program can be devastating to children, families and the early educators who staff them. When a number of programs owned and operated by the same company — often referred to as a child care chain — start closing in rapid succession, it becomes cause for alarm and deserves attention. That’s what’s happening with , as multiple sites around the country are closing. This episode, which is one of the first illustrations in the U.S. of what can happen when a for-profit child care chain goes sideways, calls for close scrutiny. 

Guidepost Montessori is a network of more than 130 Montessori-inspired child care programs and schools serving children ages birth to 18, with most programs focusing on children under 6 years old, according to its website. Most sites are located in the U.S., with some abroad. The network is owned and operated by Higher Ground Education, an education management company that is backed by tens of millions of dollars in . Higher Ground Education pursues what one of its funders refers to as a “hyper-scaling” approach, and founder and CEO Ray Girn () once drew an , telling EdSurge in 2020, “I think that there is an opportunity to achieve [with Guidepost] what ride-sharing apps or Airbnb have achieved: show the world another way of doing education at a sufficient scale.” 

Yet just since the beginning of 2025, at least 16 closures have been reported by local news outlets: Guidepost has announced in Colorado (and paused a sixth site that was slated to open) as well as three sites in , two in , two in , and sites in , , and . These closures follow others that occurred abruptly last year in and in (the latter allegedly as a response to staff unionization attempts). Importantly, these are just the known closures that have been publicly reported in the news. In a Feb. 28 on the Higher Ground Education Substack, where the company shares weekly memos, new co-CEO Maris Mendes acknowledged that the company is “in the midst of closing nearly 1/3 of the school communities that have so lovingly been built over the past 9 years.”

According to Mendes, the driving force behind the closures is the same hyper-scaling strategy Higher Ground’s investors saw as a selling point; she writes that, “In our eagerness to meet the vast vision of our mission, we overextended ourselves, growing our school network beyond what we could effectively support, both financially and operationally.” Specifically, the company is struggling to pay rent to landlords. Last year, after reportedly missing multiple rent payments, spurring the landlords to change the locks. In December 2024, Guidepost in Missouri for nearly $240,000 in non-payment of rent and “unlawful detainer” of the premises by Guidepost.

Similarly, to about the Colorado closures, Guidepost asserted that “Our organization struggled to raise the capital necessary to support our schools, the majority of which were still recovering [from the pandemic], and suffering major losses. At many schools, we were running losses of $50,000+ per month that our creditors were no longer willing to subsidize, and we’ve had to figure out how to manage. In some cases, our landlords have been able to help us navigate these difficulties. They have generously provided rent relief, or renegotiated lease terms, in order to help an individual school to overcome its challenges and reach a point of financial sustainability. In other cases, that hasn’t been possible.” 

The pandemic point is an interesting one. The pandemic certainly threw many child care programs for a loop, but it’s worth observing that through two funding rounds in January and April of 2021 and continued to open new sites at a rapid clip, suggesting an aggressive strategy despite the pandemic rather than one hobbled by it. 

The trouble Guidepost finds itself in is reminiscent of other child care chain collapses or near-collapses outside of the U.S. As I , large chains like Australia’s ABC Learning and the Netherlands’ Estro Group previously saw rapid and widespread closures due to financial mismanagement or overly aggressive growth. 

While much more remains to be investigated, Guidepost may be on the path toward becoming one of America’s most significant child care collapses. It’s unclear what the outcome will be for the network, but it’s certainly worth asking questions about how and why this happened, whether there are any problematic trends that reach beyond Guidepost and pose risks for other chains, and what can be done to stop a company relied on by so many families and educators from getting in this type of mess in the first place.

A startling statistic scrolls across the screen: “25 million parents in the United States rely on child care in order to get to work.” 

Jen Bradwell and Todd Boekelheide, husband-and-wife directors of “Make a Circle,” a new documentary about child care struggles and advocacy, say they extrapolated this estimate with the help of Krista Olson, formerly a researcher at (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley. This discovery made them feel less alone, but it also gave them pause. As the parents of two children, now 12 and 8 years old, they knew from personal experience that the cost of child care can put a dent in the family budget and even impede careers. After digging deeper and learning how widespread the challenges are, they aspired to raise public awareness of the crisis and present a more complete picture of this broken system at work.

And the system is broken, according to Anne Bauer, director of the preschool in Berkeley, California where Bradwell and Boekelheide sent their children — and one of the early learning professionals interviewed in their film. “Parents can’t afford to pay. Teachers can’t afford to stay,” Bauer says — a line attributed to Marcy Whitebook, founder and co-director of CSCCE. 

Bradwell reflects on Bauer: “She has told me that most programs tend to center the children’s or the parents’ needs first. But a mentality shift is needed. We need to think about the teachers first and center their needs, so that they can then meet the needs of the kids and families.”

“Make a Circle” has been playing at film festivals over the past few months and the filmmakers have been taking part in screenings and conferences wherever advocates, educators and caregivers gather. PBS will show the film later this year, which will garner broader attention. “It’s a California story,” says Bradwell, “but it has a national lens and should feel relevant to people across the country.”

This is the couple’s first film as directors. Bradwell has edited numerous documentaries, and Boekelheide has edited picture and sound on a number of films and composed music for over a hundred documentaries.

“Make a Circle” began shooting in February of 2020, just a month before the pandemic shut everything down. “It was such a wrecking ball for the industry,” recalls Bradwell. “Initially, we had to ask ourselves if we should keep filming or not, but then it became apparent that yes, of course, this is such a big part of the story.” Shots of masked interactions between early educators and young children evoke a combination of admiration and renewed astonishment at what we endured.

Rather than telling their own family’s story, the filmmakers highlight the voices of a half dozen members of the early education workforce. That’s where providers like Patricia Moran enter the picture. Based in San Jose, California, Moran helped found , a union of early educators in California, about 20 years ago and serves on its negotiation committee today.

Moran, 65, tirelessly champions the early care and education workforce in her state, which includes a significant immigrant population (Immigrants comprise of the child care workforce in Los Angeles.) “We all come from different backgrounds. That’s how children start learning about different cultures, different language. It gives them healthy emotional development that is so important. Empathy is what the world needs right now,” Moran explains.

Bradwell marvels at Moran’s determination, saying, “She continues to fight and raise her voice despite all of these headwinds — being an immigrant, being a woman, being a non-native speaker with an accent, being someone whose profession is regarded as babysitting instead of educating. It’s an honor when people trust you with their story, and it’s something that we take really seriously as filmmakers.”

As a child growing up in Bolivia, Moran recalls how she saw her father fight for the rights of indigenous people and endure prison and torture as the state tried to silence his voice. “Justice was his passion,” she says. Later, as an adult, she remembers him revealing to her that he was afraid.

Much like her father, the activist and early educator is committed to her cause. In addition to her role with the union, she works as a full-time child care provider herself. She’s faced a number of health challenges, including rheumatoid arthritis and a knee replacement, but hasn’t let that slow down her campaign. She even persisted when a scar from an old surgery started bleeding. “I don’t have time to think about the pain,” she says. 

A high point in “Make a Circle” comes when the union wins as well as $80 million for a retirement fund and funding for healthcare and training. “It wasn’t easy,” admits Moran, “but we did it.”

At the same time, the documentary doesn’t feel like a “Rocky” story where the underdogs emerge victorious. One beloved and talented provider leaves for a better paying role in a public school. Others contemplate leaving for jobs in the fast food and service industries.

Without becoming didactic, the film makes a powerful case for early education. Lovingly shot classroom footage highlights the skill involved in this work, reinforcing well-known data about the importance of the early years for brain development as well as the economic arguments for investing in quality child care. As pandemic-era funding dries up, U.S. policy remains a glaring exception among wealthy nations.

“Other countries pay a lot more money and attention to early education than the United States does,” says Moran. “And that’s really sad.”

At the same time, Bradwell insists that the statistic about 25 million parents should give us hope. “It’s such a massive coalition that’s just waiting there to be tapped,” she says.

Various media outlets have exposed the and . This film gives the public a glimpse into the lived experiences of the early care and education workforce. A compelling documentary about a social crisis, Bradwell believes, has to do more than confront viewers with bleak statistics. She and Boekelheide shot hundreds of hours of footage in search of “the stories that stay with you.” As a filmmaker, she had to think like a caregiver. “Once a kid has a trusted connection,” she says, “that’s when they can learn anything. That relationship is so important, and storytelling is very much like that.”