Washington, D.C.— Today, a first-of-its-kind group of parents, providers, and advocates joined together to create the Child Care for Every Family Network (CC4EFN/the Network), a groundbreaking partnership dedicated to ensuring America builds a child care system that works for everyone. The Network convenes, supports, and activates stakeholders directly involved in and impacted by child care to build a transformed child care system. The goal: universal access to equitable, accessible, high-quality, affordable, and culturally relevant child care across the U.S., with a diverse, well-paid, and well-supported workforce.

“The Child Care for Every Family Network is our historic effort to value child care as the backbone of our entire economy,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “Generations of women have struggled to access the high-quality, affordable child care they and their families deserve, and we are dedicated to ensuring our children and their children do not inherit the same broken system as our mothers and our grandmothers. We are proud to join our partners in this fight and look forward to supporting women, workers, and every caregiver.”

The Biden administration’s historic investments in child care, including those proposed in the Build Back Better Act, are vital and necessary steps forward. For these investments to be successful, our nation must implement this vision in ways that truly meet the needs of families and providers. Child care is foundational, supporting children’s development and allowing millions of parents to participate in the workforce and civic life. Yet the current system fails to meet the needs of the people most impacted—especially women of color, whose families are disproportionately harmed by the lack of child care systems and who make up a significant amount of the underpaid child care workforce.

Now is the time to build the groundwork for a racial and gender justice-centered child care system that reflects the diversity of its stakeholders and truly serves everyone. The Child Care For Every Family Network will bring together families, organizations, and providers across localities, states, and the nation to achieve shared policy goals, developing strategies to fundamentally transform child care.

“Sharing information with other parents and bringing their wisdom back with me motivates me as a parent leader in this movement. My daughter and I have not struggled alone during the pandemic,” said Shereese Rhodes, United Parent Leaders Action Network (UPLAN) and OneAmerica member. “Parents’ voices often aren’t included in policy decisions in our children’s care—but we know our children best. This Network takes this to the next level by bringing all the players in this movement to the same table and moving from our collective wisdom.”

In its first three years, the Network will advocate, organize, and build power and movements at and across local, state, and national campaign efforts. In so doing, the Network will support an equitable and effective implementation of the Build Back Better Act’s historic investments in child care, and envision a pathway to universal child care.

The Network will address the root causes of the failed status quo, including institutional racism and sexism, and shift the axis of power to those directly impacted by and involved in child care by centering their needs and leadership.

“We deserve an equitable, publicly-funded child care system that ensures all our children, parents, and providers are thriving—and we need to prioritize the needs of those who have the least access to care now, and who experience the most inequities,” said Andrea Paluso, Executive Director of Family Forward Oregon. “To get there, providers and parents from all across the country need to be involved in all stages of our Network’s work—from advocacy to implementation. They know best what they need and how to build a child care system that will work for them.”

More information about the Network, including information on how to get involved, can be found here.

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About Child Care For Every Family Network 

The Child Care For Every Family Network is a first-of-its-kind partnership between parents, providers, and advocates to build a transformed national-to-state system that results in universal access to equitable, accessible, high-quality, affordable, and culturally relevant child care across the U.S., with a diverse, well-paid, and well-supported workforce.

The Network’s members include over five dozen organizations, led by a Coordinating Committee comprising Family Forward OR, Olé (NM), Parent Voices CA, National Women’s Law Center, Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Family Values @ Work, CA Child Care Resource and Referral Network, DC Action, Child Care Aware, Zero to Three, Community Change, AFL-CIO, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), SEIU, and UPLAN.