Child care providers aren’t just caregivers. They form the backbone of the workforce, enabling parents to maintain employment and pursue education while creating safe environments for children to thrive.
But across the country, child care systems are underfunded and under-supported. Child care providers face low wages and inconsistent payments, while families face high costs and overwhelming barriers to access.
There’s no doubt this has to change.
At Beam, we partner with local and state governments, as well as nonprofit organizations, to transform policy goals into real-world impact. By supporting state and local programs with applications, case management, eligibility determination, and seamless payments, we help communities launch initiatives that reach providers and strengthen the entire child care system.
The child care crisis
The American child care system is in crisis. Years of under-funding have led to a severe shortage of high-quality, affordable programs, forcing parents to make tough choices about work, school, and family.
While child care costs reach all-time highs, providers remain inconsistently and underpaid, leaving them financially vulnerable. Families struggle to find care, while providers — many of whom are women and people of color — are forced to leave the profession due to financial insecurity.
Government subsidies can help families afford care, but they fall short of meeting demand. In 2019, only 16% of the 12.5 million eligible children received support and by 2021, that number dropped even further to just 15%. At the same time, regulatory requirements (which are intended to ensure safety and quality) actually create additional financial and administrative burdens on providers — without adequate compensation or support.
The child care crisis, then, is truly an economic crisis. When providers can’t sustain their businesses, parents lose access to care, and communities lose essential workforce infrastructure.
Building policy that works for providers
The people closest to the business of caregiving — the providers — know what’s working, what’s broken, and what they need to fix it. But too often, policies are written without a clear plan to turn ideas into real-world programming.
Policies that don’t account for provider realities often lead to breakdowns in the system. A study from the International Journal of Child Care and Educational Policy identified four common consequences of excluding providers from policy-making:
- Undervaluation of child care providers
- Regulatory challenges for both providers and parents
- A disconnect between policy and practice
- Inconsistent implementation of laws and regulations
In practice, these issues translate to child care deserts, missed payments, provider burnout, and families left without care. To avoid these pitfalls, governments need to design policy with implementation in mind, making sure programs are accessible, timely, and grounded in the day-to-day experiences of providers – and have funding mandates for the technologies needed to make programs work.
To correct this, we encourage policymakers to get curious about the true experiences of providers. What barriers do they face? How do they experience those barriers in their daily work? And what solutions do they see making an impact?
Even in the best circumstances, policy reform takes time. And while those wheels turn slowly, providers still need support. That’s where Beam comes in — helping to bridge the gap between existing infrastructure and the resources providers need to survive and thrive.
How Beam catalyzes support for child care providers
At Beam, we believe real change happens when policy, infrastructure, and funding can directly meet the needs of communities.
Which is why we partner with organizations like Home Grown–a national collaborative of funders, caregivers, and providers working to advance home-based child care by reimagining policies and systems. Their Thriving Providers Project delivers direct cash payments to Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) caregivers and licensed Family Child Care (FCC) providers. It’s a great example of how philanthropy can supplement existing policy — and it offers a glimpse of what truly supportive infrastructure for providers could look like.
As Home Grown’s Executive Director Natalie Renew explains:
“We really seek to ensure that there is publicly funded infrastructure that gets resources, including funding and information, to diverse and diffuse providers.”
Going beyond partnerships, we’re also creating space for bigger conversations. In a recent webinar, we brought together voices from across the field — including policy leaders and advocates — to discuss how states and localities can navigate the gaps in federal child care funding and how we can reimagine systems of support.
It’s part of our ongoing commitment to building a community of practice: not just running programs, but connecting people who care deeply about providers and want to build something better, together.
You can watch the full webinar here.
Power child care fee assistance programs with Beam
Learn more about how Beam’s platform can help states and community-based organizations rapidly implement and scale complex child care fee assistance programs to support caregivers and providers. Book a demo today.
