Natalie Renew

Home Grown shares our recommendations to ensure that family child care (FCC) providers, who constitute a vital part of the Head Start workforce, 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.

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 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.