When the State of New Mexico announced it would provide universal and free childcare Last September, Yaneidy Gomez, a nurse, started thinking about creating her own program.
New Mexico made it easy for her: She applied for a child care license in March, and by April she had passed inspection and welcomed her first family, proving that a motivated provider can act quickly when states streamline the confusing maze of bureaucracy and paperwork.
Two factors made the decision to quickly open an in-home child care business possible: New Mexico’s recently expanded child care assistance program and his confidence that state support for in-home child care was here to stay.
Gomez had seen this world up close: first as a full-time caregiver for her two children, then as part of her sister-in-law’s home-based program. This experience taught him something important: In-home child care is the backbone of the American child care system and is both under-recognized and in high demand.
Families choose home child care because it meets their needs and preferences. Providers may be their neighbors, speak their language, or offer care on weekends or nights.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks issues.
Nearly a third of infants and toddlers, the age group facing the most severe child care shortages, attend home carecompared to only 12 percent in the centers. The availability of in-home child care is particularly important in rural and immigrant communities and is essential for parents working nontraditional schedules, such as the oil field jobs that attracted Gomez, her sister-in-law and other members of their Cuban immigrant community in Hobbs, New Mexico.
That’s why any serious plan to close the child care gap between infants and toddlers must include in-home care. And this care has been at the center of efforts to strengthen supply in New Mexico.
The good news for other states weighing their options is that closing this gap does not require reinventing child care policy or making the kind of large, ongoing investments that universal access requires. Two of the biggest barriers to home provisioning – low reimbursement rates and restrictive zoning – can be overcome through modest or no-cost approaches, and the gains benefit all families in a community, not just those with child care assistance.
New Mexico has made great strides in eliminating both of these barriers: The state now offers reimbursement rates that are among the highest in the nation for high-quality in-home care for infants and young children – up to $2,175 per montha 58 percent increase over previous rates.
A provider caring for six children in New Mexico can now earn more than $100,000 a year – sustainable income and a living wage that restores dignity to a historically undervalued workforce.
Now let’s move on to zoning. Local governments often slow or block the expansion of child care provision by requiring non-residential permits for in-home programs, burdening providers with legal fees and lengthy hearings – even when communities are in desperate need of care.
New Mexico Senate Bill 96effective July 1, requires all licensed and registered child care centers to be treated as residential, eliminating barriers unrelated to the quality of care inside. This is a practical model that any state can adopt.
The universal cost-based reimbursement model and zoning reform make it possible to recruit and retain providers like Gomez and her husband, an oilfield trucker ready for a change.
Related: Lessons learned from the nation’s first state to offer universal child care
New Mexico’s promise of universal child care and its practical assistance to providers is already paying off. Since New Mexico announced universal child care a year ago, the state has licensed more than 70 additional in-home providers, creating more than 700 new child care spaces.
Gomez is already aiming higher. She becomes familiar with a structured curriculum and sets goals for her program to be accredited and raise its star level – the state quality assessment metric which determines its reimbursement rate. She is personally pursuing an associate’s degree in early childhood education and hopes to advance her program to an accredited center within two years.
This is the kind of path to child care that these policy choices were designed to enable, allowing an individual or family to earn a living while meeting the needs of their friends, neighbors, and community.
New Mexico offers a model for solving the infant and toddler care shortage. It’s about thoughtful, community-focused design, fair compensation tied to the true cost of care, and zoning reform that allows for stability and growth.
Child care works best when families receive child care that meets their needs, whether in a classroom or a neighbor’s living room.
So here’s a message to states across America: Pay the people who open their homes the value of their work, then get out of their way.
Elisabeth Groginski is Cabinet Secretary of the New Mexico Department of Early Childhood Education and Care and is leading the design and implementation of the nation’s first statewide universal child care program. Natalie Renew is the executive director of Home Grown, a national initiative focused on home child care.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about family child care was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register with Hechinger weekly newsletter.
The article OPINION: In-home child care is the backbone of America’s infant and toddler child care system. We need more, appeared first in the Hechinger Report.
