The future is already happening.

– Trista Harris

The WeVision EarlyEd initiative is committed to demonstrating that the child- and quality-centered child care system that families and early childhood professionals — what we call “proximity experts” — want is within reach. Public funding and policies must be designed and reengineered to make their ideal real.

Every day, the conversation about child care in this country grows, shifting from merely acknowledging the “child care crisis” to exploring new public policy solutions. We see new child care proposals from policymakers across the political spectrum and at every level of government (like here and here).  Longstanding programs like Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) have implemented regulatory changes to increase quality, accessibility, and affordability. Trusted caregivers, like stay-at-home parents and community members, are increasingly recognized as options that need to be included in child care public policies. Early childhood educator competence, compensation, and well-being are becoming child care non-negotiables.

In this moment of heightened interest and visibility, we are often asked:

1. What does the ideal child care public policy look like? Are we there yet?
2. How can we start moving in that direction?
3. How do we know if child care public policies are aligned with what families and early childhood education professionals want?

Rooted in data from proximity experts and the WeVision Early Ed mindset shifts needed to pave the way for the ideal child care system, we are offering a new resource to guide advocates and policymakers at all levels of government. The WeVision EarlyEd Policy Essentials are five crucial policy considerations that will move us toward child care public policies intentionally designed to make the ideal child care system real.

We encourage you to reflect on the WeVision EarlyEd Policy Essentials, share them with colleagues, and use them to guide your work.

Download the WeVision EarlyEd Policy Essentials

As one proximity expert shared, “I don’t want to be a victim of the future of child care. I want to shape it.” Families and early childhood professionals have been clear about what they want —  and their data is enough to shape the future of child care. Let’s make their ideal real — it is within our reach.

Questions, comments, or feedback? Let us know by emailing info@wevisionearlyed.org.

*Disclaimer: The focus of this blog is quality in early childhood education programs in homes, centers, and school buildings. Constructs raised here do not apply to “trusted caregivers,” another important but distinct child care option. Learn more about these child care options here. 

“Child care is both underregulated and overregulated.”

– Lauren Hogan, Strategic Advisor and Content Writer for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

This statement succinctly summarizes the data we continue to receive from “proximity experts” (i.e., families, early childhood educators, and administrators). Proximity experts name inconsistent quality, constant regulatory changes, and top-down regulations as pain points of the current child care system. When it comes to addressing issues of quality, they feel limited by what they can afford and not what is good for young children.

Yet, the child care sector continues to advance outdated mindsets about quality that hold these pain points in place.

For example, the underregulate-mindset downplays the importance of quality and advocates for solutions that:

• Deregulate: Lowers standards like staff-children ratios and educator qualifications.
• Hibernate: Avoids the inherent messiness of defining quality.
• Hyper-fixate quality: Limits quality to one seemingly isolated indicator, such as teacher-child interaction, to make a “shiny object” product or policy push more appealing.
• Manipulate: Embrace the current sector’s low-quality bar to maximize profits or serve a larger number of children. 

Meanwhile, the overregulate-mindset complicates quality and advocates for solutions that:

• Duplicate: Creates separate definitions of quality for each funding stream (family fees, philanthropic grants, public PreK, Head Start, Early Head Start, child care subsidy) and setting where early childhood education services are provided (home, center, school building).
• Inflate: Make important value statements, such as inequitable access to higher education and national credentials but further complicate quality with expectations that are difficult to understand, measure, or incentivize on a large scale.

At its core, the proximity experts’ ideal child care system is one that allows them to make child-centered and quality-centered decisions. 

They want quality expectations that all early childhood education programs (one of the two main child care options) must meet and families should expect and receive regardless of where they receive care and how it is funded. Similar to other industries, this baseline should be defined by the professional organizations they trust. This quality baseline serves as the floor, not the ceiling, to make way for other specialized approaches to quality. 

Most importantly, at the center, they want increased funding and resources from federal, state, and local government agencies— not from families or child care workforce wage suppression — to meet the baseline quality. 

Below is a sketch of what this could look like. What if each aspect is defined, monitored, and reinforced by the appropriate entities? What if — instead of underregulating and overregulating quality — we advance solutions that calibrate and elevate quality to make the ideal child care system real?

Note: The graphic illustrates how this would look in the context of early childhood education programs, regardless of settings. For “trusted caregivers” (e.g., family member, stay-at-home parent, nanny, au pair, etc.), all aspects of the quality baseline would be defined by the families themselves with government agencies providing some financial relief.

What is missing? What should be considered? How can this concept be strengthened to make the ideal real?

Click here to Tell Us

For too long, public funding for child care has been provided only during extreme circumstances and to certain families:

• Men at war and women need to work outside their homes? Then use government funding to help support access to quality child care but stop the funding when the war is over. 
• Families experiencing harsh economic conditions? Then use government funding to help support access to quality child care but stop the funding when a family’s income increases. 
• Essential workers need child care during the COVID-19 health pandemic? Then use government funding to help support access to quality child care but stop the funding when the pandemic ends.

The data we continue to collect through WeVision EarlyEd tells a different story. Government funding for child care isn’t needed just for families or a nation in crisis. Regardless of their zip code, employment status, or income levels, most families with young children want and need child care support. Just this past year we published a report that looked at child care supply and demand across Washington, D.C., and found that families across the board struggled to find quality, affordable, and accessible child care. This is a nationwide phenomenon not just unique to the District of Columbia. 

We’ve also learned that families want a range of child care options that include Early Childhood Education Programs in center, home, or school settings as well as what we’ve termed “trusted caregivers.”

• Early Childhood Education Programs (regardless of their setting type, specialty, or philosophy) are implemented by intentionally prepared and competent early childhood educators who are accountable for meeting standards of practice defined by their professional associations and/or government agencies. 
• By contrast, trusted caregivers are individuals who work under the direct auspices of families without significant oversight from early childhood education professional associations and government agencies. Trusted caregivers can include a family member, community member, co-op, off-the-grid educator, retired educator, nanny, or au pair.

Therefore, the narrative around child care has to shift. Child care cannot be presented solely as a poverty intervention, labor benefit, or forced labor participation tool. Government-funded child care cannot continue to segregate families based on income, which results in racial segregation due to racialized inequities as well as poorer outcomes for children. We must also respect family preferences and support child care options that include both early childhood education programs and trusted caregivers, and the distinction between these options must be made clear. It’s time for a paradigm shift where comprehensive public funding for child care is not a reactive measure but a proactive investment in the well-being of all young children, families, and communities.

So what can we do right now?

Here are four ways to shift our advocacy messages to get closer to what families want in a reimagined child care system:

WeVision EarlyEd is all about defining the ideal child care system and making the ideal real, but are we ready to lead the change? Families and early childhood professionals, our “proximity experts,” are clear about what they want in their ideal child care system — one that is child-centered and quality-centered. They want government policies and public funding that make sense so that young children, and the adults who care for them, have the resources needed to grow and thrive. The child care math ain’t mathing for them.

This broad definition of the ideal child care system is a strong springboard to help us unite around a shared understanding, but further details are needed. Taxpayers and lawmakers in particular will have some fundamental questions and we owe them clear and coherent responses. How we answer the following questions will help determine what is funded and how.

1. What do we mean by “child care”? Just what happens in regulated early childhood education programs (in  schools, homes or centers)? Or does child care offered by other trusted caregivers (like parents, families, community members, co-ops, nannies, and au pairs) count, too?
2. Which families need support for child care? Mainly families meeting low-income thresholds or families who are employed? Is child care support only an intervention for families with children experiencing poverty? Or all families?
3. Which child care options should the government fund? What do these options cost? How are the options similar or different? Should we subsidize child care only for the regulated early childhood education programs (in schools, homes, or centers)? Or, can government funding support child care provided by other trusted caregivers? And do the subsidies account for the real cost of quality early childhood education, notably competitive compensation for early childhood education professionals?
4. Who comprises the “early childhood education profession”? How are they different from family members and other adults who care for young children? If they are not different, why are they needed?
5. What is “quality” early childhood education? Is there a perfect definition? Who defines it? Do the field and young children really benefit when every jurisdiction and funding stream comes up with its own definition of quality? Or, should we have a consistent baseline set of quality standards upon which early childhood education professionals and families can add supplementary and specialized services?

How we answer these fundamental questions will reveal our mindsets about young children, families, and early childhood professionals. These often invisible mindsets are rooted in our values, lived experiences, biases, and beliefs. Some of these help us move closer to our idealized future, as defined by our proximity experts, whereas others are archaic and keep the current child care system in place. Systems change experts suggest examining our mindsets if we want the type of transformative change needed to make the ideal child care real. The policies, regulations, and funding levels we see are all held in place by our mindsets. WeVision EarlyEd boldly names five core mindset shifts we need to consider. Additional discussion will reveal where we are aligned and where there is divergence.

Future Readiness Test

We want to hear from you. Rate your current comfort level with these mindsets and basic details. Click here to complete this three-minute future readiness survey. We will share the results in our upcoming blog.

Take the Survey

Like many of you, our partners operating early childhood education programs are navigating the many pain points of the child care system. They continue to find innovative ways to balance quality, accessibility, and affordability with limited and inconsistent funding while accepting that “it is what it is” if they want to serve young children and their families. Our advocacy and research partners also do the same. They highlight persistent pain points and squeeze what they can from outdated policies. As a funder, we have also done the same. We have spent the bulk of our funding supporting partners so they can navigate a broken system.

While this level of collective resilience is commendable and can have a positive impact on young children and families, our partners (practitioners and advocates alike) continue to tell us that just navigating is unsustainable. It is harmful to those closest to the child care system, holds the status quo in place, and does not shift or push the system to change. It does not allow young children and families to thrive.

And when our partners speak, we listen and act. This is why we launched WeVision EarlyEd in November 2022.

The WeVision EarlyEd initiative provides the time and space for “proximity experts,” early childhood professionals and families closest to the child care system, to reimagine child care. It challenges outdated mindsets. It moves us from “it is what it is” to “what it should be.” It allows us to imagine the future, and then work together to make the ideal real. In this WeVision EarlyEd space, we are all making a shared commitment to do a bit more reimagining and questioning, even as we continue navigating to survive.

Here are three things we have learned from proximity experts so far:

1. Families and early childhood professionals all have similar journeys, pain points, and aspirations. They want a child care system that is child-centered and quality-centered so young children, and those who care for them, can thrive.

2. In order to fundamentally transform the child care system, we need to challenge our assumptions about what child care is, who is served, who pays, how we define quality, and how decisions are made. We need to shift our mindsets and the way we advocate and talk about child care.

One example of shifting mindsets is how we describe child care options, which can be confusing for both families and early childhood professionals. We use a myriad of labels and it’s not always clear what services are being delivered or what families can expect —  family child care, daycare, home provider, preschool, licensed program, unlicensed program, prekindergarten, child development program, kith and kin, elementary school, friend, family, neighbor care (FFN) —  just to name a few. Some of these settings and labels are wrongly perceived as “better” than others.We created a traveling WeVision EarlyEd conference exhibit to begin to test these shifts and collect data directly from early childhood professionals across the country.

Here is how roughly 700 early childhood professionals attending a national and a local early childhood conference saw themselves in a future with clear and well-funded child care options. 

Note how these options use consistent language to focus less on the building type. Instead, they focus on the scope of services families should expect to receive from practitioners and strengthen the case for equitable funding across options. 

Data from a Local Early Childhood Education Conference in Florida

Data from a National  Early Childhood Education Conference Supporting Family Child Care

3. The ideal child care system, as defined by proximity experts, can be made real, even as we navigate the ongoing pain points.

• WeVision EarlyEd is beginning to fund and support a cohort of Solutions Lab sites so they can make all components of the ideal child care system real…right now. Here is what this looks like. At a minimum, participating sites must:
  1. Meet the industry-recognized and holistic quality standards for early childhood education programs of their choice as a baseline. 
  2. Document their impact on child growth and learning.
  3. Define an annual cost per child, based on what it really costs to run a quality-centered and child-centered program.
  4. Compensate early childhood educators, using public school wages as a guide, and intentionally support the well-being of early childhood educators.
  5. Support affordability for families who are eligible for publicly subsidized child care as well as those who aren’t. 

So, if you are tired of just navigating child care, please join us as we reimagine child care together. You will have opportunities to add to the conversation, share your expertise, host WeVision EarlyEd workshops in your community, co-fund Solution Lab work, deepen your advocacy, learn alongside others, self-reflect, and more.  

We’ll be sharing updates monthly through this blog and on social media. To learn more, visit Get Involved – WeVision EarlyEd. Make sure to sign up for updates that will keep us connected.