Brooklyn, NY - Beam – the end-to-end platform that streamlines equitable public benefit administration, formerly known as Edquity – recently launched its partnership with Home Grown to administer direct cash transfers to home-based child care providers to support Home Grown’s Thriving Providers Project. The Thriving Provider’s Project works with regional partners to provide direct cash payments to Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) caregivers and newly licensed Family Child Care (FCC) home-based providers. Drawing on learning from guaranteed income initiatives around the country and best practices in early childhood education, we know that supporting and stabilizing providers and caregivers will improve the availability and quality of care for children and families. This initiative seeks to demonstrate the impact of direct cash to reform child care payment policies and influence future decisions around compensation for home-based child care providers. Using Beam's platform, the Thriving Providers Project will support over 600 providers across the country with direct cash transfers to stabilize caregiver well-being and improve the quality and availability of child care for working families. Beam will administer ~$4M to home-based child care providers in 5-7 cities. The Thriving Providers Project has already launched with local implementation partners in New York and Philadelphia, funded in part with support from Coleman Family Ventures, Spring Point Partners and Vanguard's Strong Start for Kids ProgramTM.
“At a moment where we face a child care crisis in this country and so many families struggle to find options for affordable care, home-based child care providers are absolutely critical to the prospects of stability and economic mobility for our families and communities,” said David Helene, founder and CEO of Beam. “We know many home-based providers struggle to stay afloat, and Beam is honored to partner with Home Grown to administer funding for their Thriving Providers Project, ensuring quality and dependable home-based child care for children aged 0-5 and model a streamlined way to deliver critical support to child care providers of all kinds.”
Home-based child care providers care for approximately 11.5 million children, with 60% of them aged 0-5 years old. Home-based child care providers are also the preferred child care provider for a variety of families, including Black and Latinx families, rural families, families with nontraditional or unpredictable work schedules, and those with low incomes. Despite their essential role, home-based child care providers often face significant financial hardships, with 30-40% needing a second job to achieve financial stability. This financial insecurity impacts both caregiver and child well-being, as material hardships can reduce emotional well-being and undermine the quality of care. By providing direct cash assistance through Beam’s platform, the Thriving Providers Project ensures that home-based child care providers can offer equitable and quality care to the communities they serve.
"The data has consistently shown that home-based providers and caregivers are essential to stabilizing the economy yet they don’t earn a livable wage,” Alexandra Patterson, Director of Policy and Strategy of Home Grown shares. “TPP hopes to learn what the positive outcomes will be for children and their communities if providers earn a livable wage and how this direct cash will improve caregiver (both provider and parent) emotional well-being.”
With this partnership, Beam and Home Grown are setting a new standard for supporting child care providers, ensuring they receive the financial assistance they need to continue their essential work. The innovative work through the Thriving Providers Project comes at a time when states are tasked with changing how they administer Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) child care assistance, which includes paying providers prospectively, streamlining payments, and making sure providers can receive a full established payment rate to ensure financial stability.
While championing best practices on supporting providers, CCDF rule changes articulate new mechanisms and payment approaches that can reduce income volatility for providers and create opportunities to increase the rates paid to providers. By strengthening home-based child care practices and fostering economic stability through sustainable financing, these rule changes have the potential to enhance the quality and accessibility of child care nationwide.
To learn more, please visit https://www.bybeam.co/. To access Beam’s media kit, please visit https://www.bybeam.co/media-kit.
About Beam
Beam’s configurable cloud-based platform increases equitable and fast delivery of critical public benefits to our most vulnerable populations. Its technology allows governments, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations to administer a wide range of financial assistance programs, from rental relief and public utility benefits to emergency cash assistance, with software that simplifies applications, aids decisioning and processing, facilitates payments, and streamlines compliance, reporting, and case management into a single system.
Beam currently provides digital infrastructure for 56 governments, higher education institutions, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations in more than16 states. Since 2020, Beam has administered over $319 million to 300,000 recipients. To learn more, visit https://www.bybeam.co/.
About Home Grown
Home Grown is a national collaborative of funders committed to improving the quality of and access to home-based child care. Home Grown’s mission is to support systemic change across the country for all home-based child care providers. Home Grown envisions a country in which all children have the care they need to grow, learn and thrive. To achieve this vision, Home Grown seeks to remove policy barriers, strengthen home-based child care practices and business models, and support the growth and recognition of the sector so that all providers have the tools and resources they need to offer quality care options for parents to choose from. To learn more, visit https://homegrownchildcare.org/.
About Thriving Providers Project
Thriving Providers Project is a national initiative spearheaded by Home Grown to support local organizations launching direct cash pilots to stabilize the economic well-being of home-based child care providers so children can succeed. Learn more at https://thrivingproviders.org/.
