Click here to view the Report. |
Click here to read the Executive Summary. |
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“The state finder did not come up when I searched for child care. I didn’t even know that there was a state finder.”
— Parent
Parents of children aged five and under experience many challenges to finding affordable, reliable child care near them. Child care is essential for parents to work to provide for their families, for workforce productivity, and broader economic growth. States have developed child care finder platforms with a variety of filters that allow families to search for child care by distance, by type of center, quality rating, and other required and recommended criteria. However, many parents report that they are not aware of these finders and there is currently little research that can inform their refinement.
The Hunt Institute developed the National Child Care Finder Scale to address this gap by developing a framework to assess state child care finder platforms. The framework is grounded in interviews with parents of children aged birth to five and includes the following four categories:
The four-point scale spans Minimal (0-5), Adequate (6-10), Enhanced (11-15), and Exemplary (16-20). Findings show that most states are in the Enhanced category, which means that they have child care finders with varied features that are helpful to parents, and that there is room for improvement.
The report includes actionable policy considerations for state agency leads and legislators supporting the improvement of state child care finders. Individual state profiles are included on a clickable map below. Through this work, The Hunt Institute aims to continue Governor Hunt’s legacy of high-quality policy research and technical assistance to increase the accessibility of early care and education opportunities for all children.
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Click here to view the Report. |
Click here to read the Executive Summary. |
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Click on your state on the map below for the Child Care Finder Scale State Profiles.
