Creating the Conditions for Family Child Care to Thrive

During this webinar, Mackenzie Swirbul of Robin Hood, Jessica Sager and Natalie Vieira of All Our Kin (AOK) and Jerletha McDonald of Arlington DFW Child Care Professionals discussed the opportunities to create the conditions for robust, high-quality family child care programs to thrive in communities across the country.

Mackenzie Swirbul of Robin Hood, a foundation committed to addressing poverty in New York City that supports the work of AOK, offered introductory remarks, emphasizing the importance of strengthening the family child care (FCC) field.  Jessica Sager and Natalie Vieira provided an overview of the FCC landscape — although there are one million paid home-based child care providers and approximately 50% of young children with working mothers spend more time in home-based child care than any other setting, a functional system does not exist. They shared the challenges in the field, from isolation to long hours to low compensation, lack of access to benefits, increasing requirements and more. More importantly, they shared their plan to change that through All Our Kin’s nationally recognized, data-driven model, which is proven to increase the quality, supply and sustainability of licensed family child care. Their new framework offers concrete strategies — at the intersection of policy and practice — for state and local leaders who are dedicated to supporting and strengthening family child care in their communities. These strategies, which are already yielding strong results, include professional development, licensing support, coaching and mentoring, and business training. Finally, they also shared recommendations and examples that can be implemented in states and communities, and technical assistance opportunities that promise to help build a child care system that works for all children, families and family child care educators. 

Offering community commentary, Jerletha McDonald, a family child care entrepreneur and provider, shared her personal story and affirmed the importance of strengthening the quality of care, and why support and technical assistance to the millions of family child care providers in the country are critical.