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By the Child Care for Every Family Network, Center for Law and Social Policy, MomsRising, National Women’s Law Center, & ZERO TO THREE

We are currently in a child care crisis. Parents and families are struggling to find and afford child care in their communities. Meanwhile, child care providers are struggling to stay afloat while making poverty-level wages.

The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which provides essential federal child care funding to states, is desperately underfunded and not designed to address the full scope of this crisis. For those who can access it, CCDF is a critical lifeline, providing child care assistance to 1.6 million children and helping states to improve the quality of care for all children. This assistance is vital to supporting children’s development and helping parents work so that they can support their families. But the vast majority of eligible families cannot access the program. Because CCDF is underfunded, it only reaches 1 in 7 eligible families, and payments to providers are too low to support a stable workforce.

We urgently need Congressional action to address this crisis. The Child Care Modernization Act (CCMA), which reauthorizes CCDF, is not the answer to this crisis and may even make it worse. If passed, the bill would:

• Weaken existing protections and safeguards that help ensure families receiving assistance have access to the same options as higher-income families and require states to raise payment rates for providers;
• Fail to provide new funding to a program that can currently only serve 1 in 7 eligible families due to inadequate funding; and
• Fail to safeguard CCDF from cuts and policy changes that would undermine child care access and quality.

The Child Care Modernization Act Weakens Current Law

The CCMA significantly weakens current federal law by eliminating the “equal access” requirement, threatening parents’ child care choices and access, and weakening the oversight authority of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The equal access requirement has been foundational to the CCDF program for decades. This long-standing tenet requires the program to be designed so that participating families have equal access to child care as families with higher incomes who do not qualify for the subsidy program. This provision is central to HHS oversight authority of state child care programs, and HHS legally uses this statutory provision to determine whether state provider payment rates are adequate. Without it, states would be free to set provider rates even lower, which would harm families, children, and child care providers. This weakens protections that help expand child care options and access for families who rely on child care assistance and that help providers be paid more fairly.

The Child Care Modernization Act Will Not Deliver Higher Provider Payment Rates

The bill does not guarantee higher payments to child care providers. While it requires states to use cost estimation models—a tool that estimates what it actually costs to provide quality child care in states—to calculate provider payment rates, it does not require states to actually pay providers based on the estimated true cost of care. States could complete the required analysis and still keep reimbursement rates low.

At the same time, because the bill removes the long-standing “equal access” requirement, there is less federal oversight to hold states accountable for setting adequate payment rates.

In practice, this means states could use the new cost model methodology but still use current or lower payment rates rather than increase payments to reflect the true cost of providing quality child care. Simply requiring a new way to estimate costs does not ensure providers receive higher payments or that families have better access to care. On the other hand, if states voluntarily chose to raise payment rates using the cost methodology in the CCMA, hundreds of thousands of families currently being served would likely be cut from the program since this bill does not include any additional and much-needed investments in CCDF.
The Child Care Modernization Act Will Not Result in More Families Receiving Child Care Assistance Claims that the CCMA would lead to more families receiving care because of increased flexibility to expand eligibility are false. The CCMA includes no new funding, so any flexibility to expand eligibility in the program does not help when there are already millions of eligible lower- and middle-income families not being served because of funding constraints.

A real commitment to child care is a commitment to investing in child care. But this bill does not increase funding by a single cent.

Now Is the Wrong Time for Reauthorizing the CCDF Program

Reauthorization should only be undertaken when there is a shared commitment to strengthening the program for children, families, and providers—not when it could become a vehicle for weakening the protections and standards that make the program effective. At a time when the Administration is pursuing sweeping changes that would reduce access to the CCDF, Head Start, and the Preschool Development Grant Birth-5 program and reduce federal oversight and regulatory requirements, reopening the law creates unnecessary risk. Federal child care standards are essential to protecting children’s health and safety, promoting quality, ensuring accountability, and safeguarding taxpayer investments. Congress should not open the door to policy changes that could undermine these core protections.

By Rose White

Excerpt:

The Center for Law and Social Policy, CLASP, a liberal anti-poverty advocacy organization, released the reports Thursday, April 16 after interviewing dozens of people last year across seven states including Michigan.

The interviews were conducted from July through November with 56 immigrant parents of young children and 67 child care providers, early educators and advocates.

Read the full MLive article here.

CLASP’s Kaelin Rapport and Suma Setty were invited to publish this blog as part of the Foundation for Child Development’s Spark series curated by Vivian Tseng, FCD President and CEO, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa, University Professor, Department of Applied Psychology, NYU Steinhardt.

Excerpt:

Since January 2025, 6,200 children have seen the inside of an immigration detention center, at least 79 children have been teargassed or pepper sprayed during ICE operations, and over 200,000 children are estimated to have had a parent detained in immigration detention. While these numbers are shocking, we knew that we would have to document this harm from the perspective of those directly impacted. A 2018 report released by our colleagues at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) on the impact of immigration operations on immigrant families with young children during the first Trump administration served as a warning for what was to come.

This time around, new research revealed the emotional and economic toll of immigration actions on immigrant families with young children and the people who serve them. It proves how policy isn’t some distant process that happens in echo-chambers in Washington, D.C., but seen and felt on the ground by families with young children, pregnant people, and community advocates. Despite the challenges, however, they are persevering and doubling down on their commitment to their families and communities.

Read the full blog here. 

 

 

By Mikayla Slaydon

The Trump Administration has attacked immigrant and mixed-status families’ access to child care and early education and other public benefits programs since his first term. The first year of the second Trump Administration has put immigrants and their families at the center of heightened and intense immigration enforcement activities and attacks on program eligibility. As a result of the confusion and fear caused by these attacks, CLASP has updated its 2017 resource on eligibility for federally funded child care and early education programs such as Head Start and the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG). This updated resource is more essential than ever, as children disappear from classrooms and early education programs and all families, especially immigrant families, too often encounter mountains of red tape just to access important benefits like child care.

This administration has worked extensively to undermine child care and early education programs and dismantle access for children and families, including citizen children in mixed-status families and citizen children who are legally eligible for programs. These attacks include but are not limited to:

• Attempting to reverse the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act guidance outlining Head Start and Early Head Start as education programs and thus allowing any child, regardless of their or their family’s immigration status, to access and benefit from these programs.
• Limiting the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) terms that Head Start programs could use; and restricting the use of federal funding for any training and technical assistance that supported DEI initiatives.
• Swiftly and punitively freezing funding due to alleged “fraud” in Minnesota and other states earlier this year.
• Proposing to change how programs assess eligibility, with more
• Attempting to limit accessibility for Head Start and the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), including the newly proposed Head Start rule and the newly released final rule for CCDF.

The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the administration in court over DEI attacks, mass office closures and layoffs, and eligibility for immigrant children in Head Start, and was granted preliminary that halt the implementation of these efforts.

Despite blatant attempts to destabilize an already fragile child care sector, CLASP will continue to emphasize how necessary accessibility for programs that support basic needs are for the one in four children who live in immigrant households in this country. When immigrant families and children are facing attacks from every angle, highlighting true facts about program eligibility and resources available to immigrant families is essential.

For an updated analysis on program eligibility for immigrant families and children, please see CLASP’s resource here.

CLASP’s safe spaces guide empowers early childhood programs to create a safe spaces policy to protect families’ safety and privacy and safeguard against immigration enforcement activities.

By Hannah Matthews, April 2017

Updated June 2026 by Mikayla Slaydon 

One in four children under age six has at least one foreign-born parent, and 94 percent of these children are U.S. citizens., While most of these children have parents with some form of lawful status, many live with at least one undocumented parent or household member. Consequently, families may be hesitant to access public benefits and programs for which they are legally eligible out of fear or confusion regarding eligibility rules. The federal government establishes immigrant eligibility policies for federal programs. This fact sheet details immigrant eligibility for early childhood programs, specifically child care subsidies and Head Start, as they exist under current federal law and guidance.

Read the fact sheet here.

Although there are ongoing threats to eligibility for some of the programs discussed in this fact sheet, the purpose of this piece is to provide the current status of eligibility for all programs. For more context on current eligibility threats, please visit “Understanding Immigrant Eligibility for Child Care and Early Education Programs.”

by Jackson Advocate News Service

[EXCERPT]

MDHS keeps track of children enrolled at CCPP centers. In fact, licensed child care centers are regulated and monitored regularly by multiple state agencies. Controls are in place to ensure enrollment-based reimbursements do not result in wasteful spending. Further, the federal CCDF regulations that govern CCPP rigorously prevent fraud.

The Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative urges MDHS to continue the practice of paying centers based on enrollment.

For a thorough review of CCDF monitoring, please refer to this brief from Dr. Ruth Friedman, former director of the HHS Office of Child Care: https://www.clasp.org/publications/report/brief/program-integrity-and-accountability-in-the-child-care-and-development-fund-program/

Read the full article at the Jackson Advocate News Service.

By Cristina Tudino

Excerpt:

But on his second day in office, Trump revoked that policy. An April 2026 report by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) confirms that ICE is making it harder for childcare workers to do their jobs while also preventing working parents from getting the help they need.

“The environment of fear is destabilizing an already precarious industry and threatening childcare supply for all families, whether or not they’re documented citizens,” says Suma Setty, senior policy analyst at CLASP.

The researchers interviewed early childhood care providers and educators in seven states, and confirmed that the number of no-shows at day care and schools increases when there are reports of ICE activity nearby. From a New Jersey childcare director interviewed: “We might as well just close because of who we are and where we’re located and our demographic [because] we won’t have students.”

Read the full article in The Persistent here. 

By Rainesford Stauffer

Excerpt:

Experts stress that America has the resources to make life more affordable. And frequently, communities are fighting for those solutions themselves, from movements for student-debt cancellation or student loan forgiveness to tenants organizing to fight for affordable housing or needed repairs. Developing policy that pulls people out of survival mode has to be part of addressing affordability, according to Isha Weerasinghe, director of public benefits justice at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “We want to move forward, move above existing to thriving,” explains Weerasinghe. That means not just being in a place of paying to exist, or the stress of making ends meet, but being able to think about spending money on things you enjoy, too. “That seems very simplistic, but it’s so important,” said Weerasinghe. “Why can’t we all deserve that?”

…

Right now, the country is experiencing high inflation, labor cuts, trade restrictions, and the devastation of H.R. 1. Weerasinghe and the CLASP team want to think about a public benefits system that is more inclusive. For example, while the team works on SNAP reform, they are also thinking about food sovereignty, or solutions that have worked for communities for centuries despite disinvestment. Weerasinghe stresses that expanded inclusivity also ensures that immigrants are able to access all benefits. Then, what supports that in terms of revenue is building strategies around tax benefits to improve the system, like the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit.

If more people are able to access resources, it means more buy-in to the system, which means more people can get the services they need. For example, Weerasinghe explained, if more people have access to Medicaid, and there were less restrictions on how providers were able to reimburse for their services, it means more money in the health care system. Or, take SNAP: When there are less people who are receiving SNAP, while food prices are going up, fewer people participating means less purchasing power. That, in turn, impacts small businesses as well as larger ones—and since it impacts their profits, it leads to job cuts, which will affect the economy overall. More inclusivity benefits the economy across the board.

For people like Theresa and her family, she knows firsthand how these policies could actually make life easier and more affordable. “Taxpayer money should be spent investing in the present and future of our country,” she said, “not gutting social programs to provide tax cuts for corporations and billionaires.”

“The purpose of social programs—a lot of them were built in the ’60s, in the time of the civil rights movement as well—they’re built as a bridge to ensure that people have access to services and to make sure that all people have an ability to survive, but also to thrive,” Weerasinghe adds.  “I think we have somehow come back to square one with this, and we have forgotten the purpose of why those programs were built in the first place.”

Read the full article in Dame Magazine here.

 

Washington, D.C., May 11, 2026 — Today the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) published its anticipated final rule for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which rescinds the 2024 final rule. This includes removing requirements to:

• limit family copayment to 7 percent of a family’s income;
• provide some direct services through grants and contracts for specific populations; and
• pay providers prospectively and based on enrollment.

In response to this final rule, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)’s Executive Director, Wendy Chun-Hoon, issued the following statement:

“CLASP opposed these recissions in our comment submitted in February, and we remain firm in our opposition today. As so many families across the country grapple with the affordability crisis, rolling back the 2024 provisions will only weaken the child care sector, make it more difficult for committed educators to remain in the field, and make child care more expensive for families.

At a moment when the child care sector is significantly challenged and under-resourced and families are struggling to find and afford care, we need real investments and real solutions that will lift people up and meet their needs—not tear them down and make what is hard even harder. We need significant investments in child care and policies that recognize and support the value of children, families, and child care providers.

This final rule enacts policies that will further destabilize an already fragile child care system, jeopardizing both families and providers. This is not what our nation needs. Instead, we need robust federal investments in a child care system that values and pays providers well and makes access to care simple for families—along with states that center the needs of children, families, and providers in decision-making.”

By Shira Small, Stephanie Schmit, and Rachel Wilensky

As Congress negotiates the fiscal year (FY) 2027 appropriations package, CLASP is calling to double the discretionary funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which provides child care assistance for families with low incomes and increases the quality of child care for all families. Only 15 percent of eligible children had access to child care assistance through CCDBG and other federal sources in 2021, the most recent year with available data. Increasing the total discretionary funding to $17.66 billion would expand subsidy access to more than 870,000 additional children, based on CLASP analysis. This added funding would be crucial to better reach and support families with low incomes, who have never been able to fully utilize the program as the result of decades of insufficient funding.

In addition to limiting access for eligible families not yet accessing the program, years of inadequate and stagnant funding for CCDBG mean that children currently accessing the program are at risk of losing assistance due to increasing costs. Recent actions by the administration to freeze or delay funding for child care, paired with limited increases in funding and the expiration of child care COVID relief resources, have only undermined the child care and early education sector further. These actions include:

• The most recent $85 million increase for CCDBG in FY26 did not keep pace with inflation, falling over $160 million short of what’s necessary to ensure there are enough resources to serve all children currently accessing care through CCDBG.
• The July 2025 reconciliation package made dramatic cuts to public benefits programs, putting further financial strain on states that were already struggling to meet the demand for eligible families in their states.
• The expiration of COVID relief funds left many states without the funding necessary to continue serving the number of children and child care providers they were able to support during the pandemic.
• The Trump Administration has attempted to freeze states’ child care funding, spread misinformation about fraud in the child care sector, and proposed regulations that would weaken provider compensation and reduce families’ affordability protections.

As Congress engages in the FY27 appropriations process, it is essential that they protect programs families rely on and fight for investments that align with need, like urgent investments in child care. Concerns about economic stability, rising inflation, and attacks from the Trump Administration make sustained increases in annual discretionary funding a necessary support. The table below estimates the total per-state allocation from doubling current CCDBG funding and how many more children would be able to access care with the increased funds.

>>Download the full report