The lack of affordable, quality child care is a problem so familiar; it can feel unlikely to ever change.  Families and providers can feel skeptical about joining yet another initiative to try to solve the issue. The Strengthening Working Families Initiative (SWFI) faced that challenge when it launched in 2017 with a “2 Gen” approach—where parents increase their education and job skills and young children have access to high quality early learning experiences. The Canopy team supported a learning community made up of people from higher education, workforce development, human services, child care, and businesses. Their task: to increase the number of high-quality child care spots available for the children of parents enrolled in the SWFI program at Community College of Aurora and Community College of Denver.

Unlike other initiatives of its kind, this one didn’t just engage the “usual suspects.” While many of the veterans in the room could recognize some of the partners, everyone saw new faces as well.  Seeing such a diverse cross-section of partners sent a message that this initiative might result in real impact.  Banking on that possibility, they dug into the root causes for lack of child care. Three core needs emerged: 

• better communication of available options
• policy solutions to better support child care providers
• a set of shared service to support Family, Friend, and Neighbor care providers 

As the SWFI project completes its third year of collaboration, it has leveraged these diverse partnerships to expand awareness of available child care spots through improvements to online directories and training of key staff who help SWFI students locate child care options.  The network of partners involved with SWFI has helped improve policies and regulations that affect how parents access child care and how the workforce is prepared to provide child care.  In summer 2020, the learning community partners launched Springboard Child Care—an innovative model that supports individual child care providers with the back office supports they need to become more financially viable as a business, and to increase the quality of the care they provide.  These innovative solutions won’t solve the need for high-quality child care once and for all, but they are a step forward that many didn’t think was possible. See the Full Report [Link Report]