It is Possible: Making The Ideal Child Care Real
The Bainum Family Foundation has invested deeply in early childhood for more than a decade. In late 2021, we set out on a journey to do something that families with young children and early childhood experts in America have asked for: Get child care right.
Introduction
A Chance to Get it Right
Clarifying our Terms
We’re reframing and clearly defining terms to describe care and education of young children to avoid outdated mindsets about child care, including “child care,” “early childhood education (ECE),” “trusted caregiver,” “day care,” and “proximity expert.”
Clarifying Our Scope
We’re focused on the providing policy guidance for the birth-to-5 child care system in the United States. It is a catalyst for making the ideal child care real—as defined by the families, educators, and administrators that know the children in their care and the impact of child care policies best.
Our Data Source
We gathered data and insights from proximity experts—the families, early childhood educators, and program administrators who use or work within the child care system—via Human-Centered Design research, as well as Conference Sessions and Interactive Exhibits.
high costs, limited options
Putting today’s child care in context
The child care crisis in America is long-standing and well documented. Urgent challenges face child care proximity experts: high needs and inadequate supply, high costs, low pay and challenging working conditions, and more.
Pain points, risks, and compromises
Proximity experts Enduring the current
Our data revealed that, across the country, families, educators, and administrators face similar pain points as they navigate the child care system. Their current experiences — filled with time and resource scarcity, limited options, and mistrust — lead proximity experts to enter the system with anxiety, manage to survive along the way, and exit the system with worry.
Thrive, Grow, and Evolve
Proximity experts Envisioning the Ideal
Families, educators, and administrators also share a similar vision of an ideal child care experience where young children, and those who care for them, can thrive, grow, and evolve. To families, it means affordable and quality child care options driven by what their children need. To educators, it means having the resources they need to support children and families. To administrators, it means ensuring revenue allows them to retain competent educators and make quality-centered decisions.
Shift the child care system
It Is Possible: Making the Ideal Real
Shifting Our Mindsets to Shift the System
Demonstrating That the Ideal Is Possible
make the ideal child care real
Get Involved
The WeVision EarlyEd initiative provides an opportunity for all of us, particularly policy influencers, to deepen our understanding of what families, educators, and administrators are experiencing in the current system and what they want and need in their ideal child care system.