Family Child Care: A Closer Look
We surveyed current and former Family Child Care Home (FCCH) providers in the counties with the steepest decline in FCCHs since the Great Recession to understand challenges they face to sustain their business.
Licensed Child Care Supply
In California more than 10,800 center-based programs and 27,500 family child care homes are licensed to serve over 1 million children ages birth to 12 years. However, this supply only meets the need of 1 in 4 children with working parents.
License-Exempt Child Care
License-exempt child care (also referred to as informal child care or family friend and neighbor care) refers to child care providers who can operate legally without a license.
Licensed Child Care Costs
Many families struggle to afford child care, which makes the availability of subsidies vital for many working parents to maintain employment while providing a quality early care environment for their children.
CalWORKs Child Care
California Work Opportunities and Responsibility to Kids Act (CalWORKs), known federally as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), has a three stage child care system.
TrustLine Overview for 2017-18 Fiscal Year
TrustLine is the California registry of in-home and license-exempt child care providers (babysitters and nannies) who have passed a background screening. There were 17,510 TrustLine applications submitted in the 2017-18 fiscal year. Eight percent of the applications were closed due to criminal or child abuse histories.
Decline of Licensed Family Child Care Supply 2008-2017
California's licensed family child care home (FCCH) supply has been on a steady decline since 2008. FCCHs are important because they are more likely to offer flexible hours of care and are more affordable than center-based care, assisting working families struggling to make ends meet.
2019 Policy Agenda
Check out our policy agenda for 2019 to see our top advocacy priorities.
Expanding the Child Care Initiative Project (2018)
The decline in licensed family child care homes in California (and subsequent lack of infant/toddler care) cannot be ignored when they play such a pivotal role for working families. Given that CCIP is the foundation of caregiver support in California, expanding it is the clearest way to help remedy this problem.
Kaleidoscope Play & Learn Evaluation
With funding from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the California Child Care Resource & Referral Network (the Network), in partnership with Engage R+D, assessed the impact of a California pilot of the Kaleidoscope Play & Learn model.