Natalie Renew

Child care licensing is important to the field and the current licensing systems require changes to better support family child care. This blog explores how listening and partnering with FCC providers could greatly improve licensing systems.

In the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, we saw sweeping changes to many aspects of American policy and many more have been proposed. This blog post lays out key information to support you in making sense of this moment and taking action to protect yourself and your community and to impact the outcome of the proposed actions. 

To support home-based child care with tax policy, there are opportunities for organizations to make federal policy asks or for local governments to replicate some existing, successful programs.

At Home Grown, our work and focus are unchanged in 2025: We are working for a future where all children thrive and where the adults closest to our children, namely their parents and care providers, are valued and supported. Learn more about how we plan to persist in our mission.

Emergency funding is deeply ingrained in the work of Home Grown. Home Grown has developed a national team of organizations and partners to design and set up of the Home Grown Home-Based Child Care Emergency Fund for Severe Weather & National Disaster Response.

This family child care recommendation report provides in-depth insight into the challenges providers face in current family child care state licensing systems and recommended solutions to help design system reform using FCC provider perspectives and expertise.

Home Grown comparte nuestras recomendaciones para garantizar que los proveedores de cuidado infantil familiar (CCF) puedan participar en los beneficios de los cambios propuestos por la Administración para la mano de obra de Head Start y ayudar a satisfacer la necesidad de una atención y educación tempranas de alta calidad, accesibles y asequibles.

Home Grown shares our recommendations to ensure that family child care (FCC) providers can share in the benefits of the changes proposed by the Administration for the Head Start workforce and help meet the need for high-quality, accessible and affordable early care and education.

At Home Grown, we are looking at the year ahead of us and are hopeful for the future of home-based child care and the work we are doing to improve the sector. Learn more about what we're hopeful for from 2023 and what we'll be working toward in 2024.

Home Grown believes that to reform our child care system there should be holistic compensation approaches for providers that include fair wages, access health care retirement, nutrition assistance, housing support, paid leave, loan forgiveness and others.

Cuando Home Grown se lanzó hace cuatro años, existían pocos datos sobre el cuidado infantil en el hogar. Hoy celebramos el interés y la inversión actuales en la investigación sobre el cuidado en el hogar y analizamos cómo los datos pueden cambiar la narrativa en el futuro.

When Home Grown launched four years ago, there was little data around home-based child care. Today we celebrate the current interest and investment in researching home-based care and look toward how data can shift the narrative in the future.

Home Grown repasa los acontecimientos más importantes en el cuidado infantil en el hogar en 2022 y comparte esperanzas para el futuro del sector en 2023.

Home Grown looks back at the major events in home-based child care in 2022 and shares hopes for the sector's future in 2023.

Celebrating three years as an organization, we share highlights of the organization's model for innovation and replication that has positively impacted child care across the nation.

Learn more about the U.S. DHHS's Administration for Children and Families' September 2022 Notices of Funding Opportunities and how they will affect the home-based child care sector.

Read Home Grown's statement on the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act and the proposed investments in the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

Greater attention to, inclusion of, and support for Family Friend and Neighbor caregivers is an urgent priority to ensure economic stabilization. 

With new federal investments, now is the time to make our system more inclusive and equitable by including FFN caregivers in child care financing and quality improvement programs.

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services and the George Kaiser Family Foundation created Kith.care to support essential workers in qualifying and paying their relatives for in-home child care.

Home Grown’s program succeeded in helping some home-based providers access PPP funds, but many were shut out of this public funding in a time of crisis.

We must make sure working families can find safe, affordable, accessible child care, and we need not look farther than our homes.

New attention and funding are needed to ensure that home-based child care providers can remain open and provide services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke about the critical role informal, home-based child care played in her life, speaking specifically about her Aunt Bee, who helped raise her children.