Child Care was broken before Covid. Now it’s worse: How We Got Here and How to Fix It.
Today we are delighted to share a new essay about the current child care crisis impacting families around the United States.
As we seek to rebuild a child care system with better outcomes for children, families, and the child care workforce, we must examine the assumptions upon which the current one was built - assumptions that no longer hold true for this moment or for our communities.
Home Grown is helping us to revisit these assumptions, and to imagine a new set of founding concepts to move us toward a more inclusive and equitable child care system, one that meets parents’ needs while also supporting and compensating caregivers and providers.
Their five-point plan includes:
Fund quality child care as a public good: We must rethink the overall funding strategy for child care and invest in child care as a public good.
Prioritize families facing adversity: While all families with young children need support and assistance, we must pay special attention to families facing the most adversity.
Ensure parents and providers drive decisions: The current systems do not adequately engage parent and provider voice and do not share decision making with these groups.
Commit to Quality: Based on the science, prioritize relationship-based caregiving and continuity of care and support it by upskilling caregivers and teachers through effective professional development and coaching and leveraging innovation (there are a myriad of promising technological tools and shared resources ready to scale) to ensure that both loving care and appropriate learning occur.
Scale and support home-based child care: As we progress toward expanding the options available to families, we recommend scaling and supporting various forms of home-based child care.
The authors conclude that we need to re-examine our assumptions about child care and make a public investment in the future of our nation’s children and our economy. Quality home-based child care—a flexible, affordable option—must be an essential piece of a better solution.
And, make plans to join us at 1 pm ET on October 7th for a conversation with providers and advocates about this paper and building a child care system worthy of our children’s future.