Making Universal Childcare a Reality

Making childcare available when and where people need it has powerful potential to strengthen families and communities. By partnering with providers and parents to frame childcare as the public good it is, philanthropy can drive progress.

A strong care system determines whether children can get a good start, parents can keep their jobs, and families and communities can build a prosperous future. To realize this vision, parents, providers, advocates, and lawmakers across the country are taking collective action to make universal childcare a reality. RWJF is supporting this work by investing in strategies that will improve care and in narratives that can transform mindsets around it. We believe doing so can pave the way to a future where health isn’t a privilege for some but a right for all.

Unfortunately, our existing childcare system is failing millions of families, too often denying parents good options and caregivers fair pay and benefits. Our government’s severe underinvestment in childcare forces too many programs to choose between provider wages, provider training, and health and safety requirements. Our focus on center-based care to the exclusion of home-based and family care prevents many would-be providers from participating in the system. Too often, we treat care as episodic, missing the myriad ways it continuously shapes our communities, workplaces, and society. 

Recognizing care as a public good that supports community wellbeing can change that and drive progress. That’s why RWJF has invested in IDEO.ORG, a nonprofit design studio that partners with communities and organizations to reimagine services, shift narratives, and design strategies to realize a better world. For five years IDEO has been partnering with childcare advocates, educators, parents, and organizers to lay the cultural and narrative groundwork for a future that recognizes and supports childcare as a public good. Through this initiative, leaders across the country are reframing childcare as a shared responsibility and an investment in our collective wellbeing. 

These three communities are among those putting this idea into practice.

Blazing a trail in New Mexico

New Mexico recently became the first state to provide universal no-cost childcare to families, regardless of income. By making childcare accessible to all families, the state’s leaders aim to support parents, strengthen communities, and help children grow and learn in safe, nurturing environments. That allows parents to plan their future, providers to sustain quality care, and children to get the strong start they deserve. 

A key feature of New Mexico’s program is that it allows families to choose care that works best for them, whether it’s a childcare center, a home-based provider, a faith-based or language immersion program, or an option that provides care during evenings or weekends. 

RWJF supports the New Mexico-based Partnership for Community Action as well as national partners working in the state. Together, we have collaborated with parents, providers, organizers, and advocates who paved the way for this achievement. They are now helping implement New Mexico’s program in a way that recognizes the essential role of early childhood educators, advances equity, and provides quality care.

New Mexicans are sharing their experiences. Olga Grays, an early childhood educator and Parent Provider Fellow with the Child Care for Every Family Network, is among those who are sharing lessons learned in the state about what parents and families need from a universal childcare system. Learn more about New Mexico’s experience here.

Universal childcare becoming reality in New York

New York is making progress toward universal childcare. Since 2017, the Empire State Campaign for Child Care has been building a powerful coalition of advocates and organizers, primarily women and women of color. With technical assistance from IDEO.org and funding from RWJF and others, the campaign organized parents across New York State. 

The foundation it built secured revenue from the state, supporting the Mayor Zohran Mamdani/Governor Kathy Hochul partnership to begin to make childcare free for 2-year-olds. In August, the Mayor announced that childcare would be free for more than 22,000 City families who had been relying on low-cost vouchers and opened a free childcare center for City workers.

Outside of New York City, three universal childcare pilots will begin to lay the groundwork for children zero to three.

The Campaign’s plan for statewide universal childcare builds on the existing foundation of the system and the work done in New York City, while aiming to: 

•  raise childcare worker wages. 
•  prioritize low-income families. 
•  protect middle-income families from cost hikes. 
•  include after-school, summer, weekend and evening care,
•  support all types of care, and
•  eventually have a system of care and learning that is completely free to all families across the state. 

RWJF will fund an evaluation of the rollout of free childcare for 2-year-olds in New York City, so others can learn from the experience.

An innovative tax credit boosting Colorado’s childcare workforce

At a time when childcare workers are leaving the field because they can’t survive on dismally low wages, Colorado is implementing a refundable state tax credit of up to $1,200 per year for early childhood caregivers. It is available to people who work at least 720 hours a year caring for children aged 5 and younger. This includes not only those who work at licensed childcare centers and preschools, but also family childcare home workers and family members, friends, and neighbors who care for children not their own.

State lawmakers decided to make the tax credit available to home-based providers after reviewing results from a pilot run by Home Grown, a national collaborative that RWJF and other philanthropies support. Home Grown works to make home-based care valued and well-resourced. With partners, it ran Colorado’s Thriving Providers pilot project, a first-of-its-kind direct cash transfer program that gave home-based childcare providers $500 per month for 18 months, along with mental health and peer support. Those payments stabilized income for participants, allowing them to purchase educational resources for children in their care, reducing their stress, and making them feel more confident and valued.

The impact of the Thriving Providers pilot demonstrates how an idea can become transformative public policy. 

Continuing the progress

The accomplishments in these three communities, and others, are changing the conversation and offering hope for a childcare system that addresses community needs and is accountable to those most often excluded from opportunity. This is an exciting time when promising state and local innovations point the way to progress that will make our society stronger and healthier.

Philanthropy has a role to play in this work. We encourage more foundations to invest in power building and organizing, particularly of parents and providers, and to support their partnerships with child advocates to continue the progress toward universal childcare. It matters. Whether we prioritize the health and development of the next generation determines the kind of society we are and will be. 

Collective action can advance universal childcare and bring us closer to becoming a country that builds belonging for every family—regardless of income, zip code or skin color—where we all can thrive. 

About the Author

Krista Scott is a senior program officer in the Healthy Children and Families portfolio at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.