Financing Child Care in the United States - Ewing Marion Kauffman ...

PHILANTHROPY
Child care is a local issue in many respects. Many communities are engaged in planning
for child care, and nearly all encounter financing issues in the process. Throughout the
country, foundations and other philanthropies have taken the lead on helping communities
define their child care funding challenges and search for methods to meet them. The
profiles included here represent a variety of approaches
In Marin County, California, community, civic and child
care leaders devised a plan to help families pay for child
care through a scholarship fund. In San Francisco, a
foundation is devoting the majority of its resources to
improving child care in the city and focuses significant
resources on four specific child care centers. In Indiana,
the Dekko Foundation has partnered with community
foundations in six counties to build endowment funds.
Each year, some of the income from the funds is used to
promote improved program quality.
Pennsylvania and Kansas City have two different
approaches to funding that supports community–wide
goals. The three Pennsylvania profiles illustrate
collaborative approaches in which one agency is funded
to act as the lead and in turn funds the collaborating
partners for their work supporting the overall plan. In
Pittsburgh, a diverse group of business leaders,
professionals, community representatives and other
concerned citizens aims to establish a unified system of
early childhood care and education. This unified system
will ensure that low–income communities in Allegheny
County and the City of Pittsburgh have enough
affordable, high–quality programs available. In the
Southeastern Region of Pennsylvania, which includes the
City of Philadelphia, Child Care Matters, a partnership of
five agencies, works directly with more than 100 child
care homes and centers. In addition, it seeks greater
business engagement on child care issues, targets
improved media coverage of child care issues and works
toward improved public policy and financing for child care
within state and city government. And in York County,
Focus on Our Future’s Commission oversees planning,
funding and implementation, including efforts to improve
program quality and the overall financing of the entire
child care system.
Kansas City provides an example of a model in which
various partner agencies are funded separately to carry
out the jointly agreed upon tasks of improving child care
quality and availability. The Fern Webster Early Childhood
Professional Development Fund and the Kansas
Accreditation Plan are two of a series of community
initiatives in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area designed
to achieve local goals for improving child care quality.
They are both profiled here.
114