Our Process

These multimedia stories—shared through print, audio, video, and graphics—explore this central question: What innovations or solutions are underway that could scale or help build an equitable, high-quality, affordable, accessible, and universal child care system in the United States?

We contracted 10 independent writers and visual storytellers for innovation reporting grants, including those who are experienced and well known in this space and some who are brand new entrants and looking to begin. We also relied on our own reporters within the Better Life Lab to tell these stories and identify trends, bright spots, and new ideas permeating the child care space.

The child care reporting the Better Life Lab team and independent journalists describe in these pieces serve as a shocking wake-up call for how our current system fails to support families and children—specifically mothers—and exacerbates racial, income, and gender inequality. But perhaps more importantly, these stories offer hope for a way forward and show the transformative power that communities can play in deciding to make child care a priority and the tremendous gains available when we invest in the people and places that support our families and take care of our youngest generation.

Creating and implementing a series of reporting grants also gave us an insight into the way in which journalism and storytelling can benefit from a collaborative process. It also allowed us to provide editorial support and encouragement for reporters who came with various levels of expertise in policy reporting. The Lab’s narrative change strategy calls for creating and maintaining a firehose of information—including rigorous research and data; evidence-based experiments; compelling stories; economic, demographic, political, and historical context; and policy analysis and solutions—to push against status quo thinking and show a vision of a different way of thinking and acting. In offering reporting grants to a cohort of independent journalists and writers and posing the questions for them to dig into, the Lab is able to broaden the spectrum, diversity, and reach of that firehose.