With June we welcomed the start of summer—longer days, the end of the school year, and summer vacations. We are pleased to share several exiting new work, most notably our recently released child care state licensing database. Additionally, read more below about our advocacy work on the horizon in states, important programmatic initiatives gaining traction, and upcoming webinars for our members. Look for the release of our 2017 State Fact Sheets on July 13, and stay tuned for more details on upcoming work around states-based child care deserts research.

Arlington, VA – Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA), National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), National Head Start Association (NHSA), National Indian Child Care Association (NICCA), National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), Teachstone, and the Afterschool Alliance would like to congratulate Joy Phelps and the staff at the Hampton University Child Development Center in Hampton, Virginia. They have been named Provider of the Month for June 2017.

I am a 26-year-old single mother of a beautiful little girl. I love being a parent. But the cost of child care for a child under the age of two is so expensive in the Washington, DC metro area. More than half of my paycheck goes to child care. As millennial, that is not much money starting out for a single parent. I thought making just over $48K a year would be the best thing in the world until I realized that I won't be able to qualify for state assistance anymore. That, paired with the cost of healthcare, has taken a toll on me as a mother. I am trying my best but I feel as though I'll never get out of this expense hole that I seem to have fallen into.

Every community is vulnerable to disasters: extreme weather, fires, chemical spills, the list goes on. Luckily, most have a local resource to help them prepare and respond to those disasters: their public library!

Bianca, a single mother of a four-year-old son with special needs, faced the difficult choice of staying home to take care of her son or working herself into the ground to make ends meet. With the help of affordable, quality child care she was able to continue to work without worrying about the safety or well-being of her son.

Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) recently introduced legislation that would help provide more child care support and flexibility to military families. The "Availability of Child Care for Every Servicemember and Spouse (ACCESS) Act of 2017" would apply to child care facilities on military bases and installations, as well as community providers. Today, nearly two-thirds of military families lack access to quality child care.