Child Care Aware^® of America is excited to announce the expansion of our child care deserts work with the release of the first two in a series of customized state-based interactive story maps, called Mapping the Gap^TM, that explores the gaps between child care supply and demand. CCAoA coined the term “child care desert” last fall when we released our initial report exploring states and communities exploring issues of child care supply and demand. We refer to areas or communities with limited or no access to quality child care as child care deserts.

WASHINGTON, DC — Child Care Aware® of America today released the first in its series of data-rich story maps of state child care gaps. The first interactive maps showed that one in four children in Alaska’s working families and two in five children in Massachusetts’s working families lack access to licensed child care.

The Senate just passed its FY 2018 budget resolution on a 51-49 vote. Before final passage, the Senate adopted an amendment from Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), Chairman of the Budget Committee, that removes the House-passed Budget resolution's instructions of $203 billion in mandatory spending cuts and replaces it with a deficit-neutral tax cut that could add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. This funding set-aside is protected from a filibuster.

It seems that every time our nation experiences a major disaster, we learn more about the gaps in our emergency response system. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma were no exception, and one gap the storms revealed is in how we assist people with disabilities, including young children, in the event of an emergency.

WASHINGTON, DC — Child Care Aware® of America is proud to sponsor Vroom Week from Oct. 16 to 20 to encourage families and caregivers to use simple prompts during daily moments to help build children’s brains.

By the time I had my third child, I knew exactly what it would take to call a child care perfect, and through the most fortunate of circumstances I found it.

From nine months on my daughter was able to attend a small in-home child care setting where she was fed home cooked meals, a steady diet of produce varied enough that she would eat most things I served her at home, protein-rich Greek (not sugar-laden) yogurt, and a big bowl of chocolate pudding while she donned a birthday hat on the day she turned one. All this took place under the adoring watch of a woman she called Miss Emma, a former student of mine turned mom and caretaker extraordinaire.