Improve Access to Quality Child Care
GEEARS commends the Senate Study Committee on Access to Affordable Childcare’s on its recommendations to address challenges facing Georgia’s families and child care providers. In conjunction with additional general state funds for child care, we specifically support establishing new state funding streams, such as a child care trust fund similar to New Mexico’s or Louisiana’s models, to…
Increase access to Georgia’s Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) Program
CAPS provides scholarships to help some working families with low incomes afford child care. Pandemic relief funding, which ended in September 2024, provided a critical lifeline for Georgia child care providers and allowed for several improvements to the CAPS program, including increasing enrollment.
In 2025, a significant investment in CAPS is the best way to address our state’s child care challenges. Funding should prioritize restoring access to 2023 levels (74,000 children served), in part by increasing initial income eligibility (currently the lowest in the country). At the same time, state leaders should maintain increased reimbursement rates to ensure child care providers can participate in CAPS.
Additional reading:
Add the child care workforce as a priority group for CAPS
There has long been a struggle to recruit and retain early childhood educators, but it has reached a crisis level. While comprehensive and sustained investment in early educator compensation is needed to support this critical workforce, the state can utilize existing mechanisms to bolster educators’ economic security, such as by prioritizing children of income-eligible early educators for CAPS Scholarships.
Support capital funding for child care providers
High-quality early learning environments support healthy child development. Georgia child care providers have indicated that they lack funding for repairs, renovations, and expansion of their facilities, impacting families’ ability to access care, particularly in rural areas. To support providers’ capital needs, Georgia could consider creating a forgivable loan program similar to other states in which the loan amount is forgiven after five years of providing child care.
