Home Grown is grateful to the Biden-Harris administration for proposing changes in response to both the needs of families to access affordable, quality child care and to the needs of child care providers to earn a family-sustaining wage for their critically necessary work offering high-quality child care. Our recommendations aim to ensure that all home-based child care providers, who constitute a vital part of the sector and serve approximately half of the children in care, can share in the benefits of the changes proposed by the administration and help meet the need for high-quality, accessible and affordable child care. Here we share our comments in response to the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families proposal to amend the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) regulations.
Alexandra R. Patterson is the Director of Policy and Strategy at Home Grown. Her work focuses on policy solutions that equitably distribute resources to home based child care providers and strengths based frameworks for understanding quality in home based child care settings. Her passion for early childhood is driven by a centering belief in access to quality education for all as a social justice issue.
Women’s contributions and experiences are not well represented in the record books, but it is just as rich and worth celebrating. Ours is a tale of community, resilience, and connection to one another, and it is inextricably linked with care work.
During Women’s History Month, we celebrate the contributions that women have made to every corner of our society and honor their achievements. Among these leaders are the more than 5 million women who form the backbone of home-based child care (HBCC).
For generations, Black home-based child care providers have built systems of care rooted in community, trust, and resilience, often stepping in where formal systems fell short. Of the over 5 million home-based child care providers, including Family Child Care providers and paid and unpaid Family Friend and Neighbor caregivers, roughly a quarter in each subgroup identify as Black Non-Hispanic