States play a significant role in shaping the policies that determine child care access, affordability, quality and sustainability. In recent years, states have made improvements to their child care systems by expanding subsidy eligibility, simplifying the subsidy application process for families, boosting provider payments, improving payment practices, increasing wages for early childhood educators, and making funding opportunities available to build the supply of care. Click on a link below to jump to that section.

While all states could invest resources in child care and sustain critical policies to support families, providers, and communities, not all are choosing to do, resulting in a patchwork of state child care policies and investments. CCAoA is tracking state efforts to improve their child care systems in the following resources:

State Policy Dashboard is a comprehensive, interactive dashboard that tracks child care and early childhood education (ECE) policies across the nation. 

State Session Round Up: Summer 2024 provides an overview of state child care policy highlights in 2024. 

State Session Round Up: Summer 2023 provides an overview of state child care policy highlights in 2023.

State Session Round Up: Summer 2022 provides an overview of state child care policy highlights in 2022. 

Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) 2025-27 State Plans provide detailed information about a state’s child care system, including how the state is meeting federal child care laws and rules and what child care policies it will support over the next three years.

Child Care Funding 101 provides a basic overview of federal child care funding, which can be helpful in sharing with state policymakers to explain how what federal funding is made available to states.

Insights from the Field: Strategies for Growing Family Child Care offers state policymakers and leaders considerations for increasing the supply of family child care homes in their states.

For Our Youngest Learners, We Cannot Compromise on Health and Safety highlights the importance of implementing health and safety guardrails that provide important safeguards for children and program staff while upholding the quality of care.

The Child Care and Adult Food Program (CACFP): Strategies for Change provides tactics states can implement to promote CACFP and increase provider participation.

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