Comments for the Administration for Children and Families’ Request for Information on Improving Access to Affordable, High Quality Child Care

In October 2019, the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a request for information for strategies to improve access to high quality, affordable child care in the U.S. Specifically, ACF requested information on: identifying emerging and innovative practices to improve access to high quality child care; identifying regulatory and other policies that increase cost of care or limit parents' choice of different child care options; and identifying ways to improve funding of child care and other related early education programs to support quality and create a more streamlined, equitable, and sustainable financing framework for future generations.

On December 2, 2019, the Early & Elementary Education Policy team at New America submitted these comments to ACF asserting that the best and most important strategy for improving quality and increasing access is greater investment. Our comment also included ideas for strategically:

• increasing child care supply through incentivizing two-generation strategies and providing adequate and predictable payments to providers;
• improving child care regulations including paying special attention to family child care providers and encouraging regulators to learn directly from the child care provider community about which regulations are duplicative or inconsistent; and
• cultivating the child care workforce through early childhood educator apprenticeships and grow your own strategies.

We appreciate and share ACF’s goal to improve access to affordable, high quality child care. After all, high-quality early learning in children’s first eight years builds the critical foundation of cognitive, social, and emotional skills on which all future learning rests. And, despite its importance, high-quality early learning opportunities remain out of reach for many families.

However, the solution to the country’s child care crisis does not rest in reducing regulations. Instead, it is in greater strategic investment.

To see the full comments, please click here.