The Regional Economic Importance of Child Care

Child care, like roads and bridges, is an important part of the infrastructure for economic development. Resources profiled here help teams articulate the regional economic importance of the child care sector and identify new policy approaches to strengthen the sector.

• More about the regional economic importance of child care

Conferences

• Innovative Work Life Policies for Employers: The economic crisis provides the time to prepare employers to create child care options, robust work/life policies, and creative approaches to "balance" work responsibilities and the changing personal and family commitments of employees.
  • Program for the conference "Preparing for the New Century: Innovative Work and Family Strategies," held at Cornell University on June 3-4, 2009.

  • Shellenback, K. 2004. Child Care and Parent Productivity: Making the Business Case, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Dept of City and Regional Planning.

  • Shellenback, Karen, 2007. Cornell Child Care Grant Subsidy Program, Online Survey - Evaluation Report 2007.

  • More about innovative work life policies for employers
• Planning for Family-Friendly Communities: Mildred Warner presented on the Economic Importance of Early Care and Education at the Achieving Equity for Women: Policy Alternatives for the New Administration conference on April 2nd, 2009 in Washington DC.
  • See the slides from the presentation, or watch a video of the presentation
  • More about planning family-friendly communities

Venture Grants

Every year, the Linking Economic Development and Child Care Technical Assistance Project awards venture grants for innovative projects that link child care and economic development. Applications for the venture grant program are solicited from all states and are reviewed by a national panel that includes experts in child care, economic development, planning and policy.

Speakers Bureau

The Linking Economic Development and Child Care Technical Assistance Project has recently created a Speakers Bureau. The goal of the Speakers Bureau is to expand our capacity to educate policy makers, leaders in economic development and early care and education, academics, consumers and others about the links between childcare and economic development.

Tompkins County, New York

The Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, along with the Day Care and Child Development Council, took the lead in creating the Early Education Partnership. The goal of the partnership is to create a community scholarship fund for child care. The Partnership produced fact sheets rather than a full report.

Outreach Strategies

Parents lack awareness of existing funds for child care. Educating parents is important both for increasing utilization rates of existing programs, and for working toward increased community funding for child care. To build parent awareness, outreach campaign should involve providers, schools, human services organizations, employers, and the media. A set of documents describe outreach strategies and provide background on existing child care funding resources.