• Create parity in access for resources to support quality in ECE settings between center-based and home-based care. Protect a mixed delivery system in the rollout of universal pre-K and ensure options meet individual family preferences.
• Stabilize the ECE workforce by ensuring livable compensation, wages, and benefits. An overall increase in the reimbursement rate, and to funding providers based on enrollment rather than attendance.
• Advocate for paid family leave through policy platforms.
• Promote a system which encourages authentic family engagement, partnership, and communication between providers and parents
  • Providers should inquire and learn from families about a child’s home experiences and family, cultural, and community contexts (e.g., home language, cultural norms) to help children navigate and bridge home and early childhood environments. This can be done through conversations such as family interviews.
  • Integrate family context and build on the children’s strengths and needs by incorporating their family’s cultural practices into the child care setting. This includes leveraging the child’s assets and individualizing the care so it supports each child’s individual learning and development.
  • Foster partnerships and build community by offering numerous and continual opportunities for family involvement that fosters trust. This entails creating space for families to convene and share resources to support the child’s learning.
• Support a child care system that createsa sense of safety, belonging, and a loving and nurturing environmentfor both children and parents
  • Proactive sharing of health and safety information with families, such as licensing, background checks, CPR certifications, and other protocols. Ongoing and open communication about incidents which occurred during the day should be provided in multiple modalities (e.g., in-person and written materials).
  • Sufficient staffing and intentional recruitment to give every child the attention they need (e.g., additional assistants or aides, substitutes to allow for planning and professional development time, non-classroom staff such as coaches). It is important to implement diversity policies (e.g., hiring bilingual staff, self-assessment of culturally affirming practices) and incentivize providers of color to enter or remain in this field to keep a rich diversity.
  • Anti-racist and anti-bias training and curriculum to create emotionally healthy environments and integrate anti-bias approaches, such as positive reinforcement practices as an alternative to exclusionary practices (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) which disproportionately impact children and families of color.
  • Culturally and linguistically affirming practices should be reflected in the child care environment (e.g., pictures, posters, or artwork) and integrated into activities which foster racial, ethnic, and cultural identity. Evidence-based curriculum and plans will create environments where children’s home languages are seen and supported, alongside English language development.
  • Provide resources for building parent communities which connect parents with similar attributes (e.g., age, language, and culture). Parents should have their own support system where they can share resources, help each other navigate challenges, and provide emotional support to one another.

• Provide immediate financial support for home-based and center-based early educators adapting to Covid guidelines to sustain the viability of serving children of essential workers. Allocate funding to guarantee full reimbursement for providers impacted by Covid to stabilize the early learning and care field as many have been forced to close. Provide incentives and stipends to help providers cover increased program costs arising from reduced teacher to child ratios, rearrange their environments to respond to safety regulations, and increase the supply of sanitizing and disinfecting materials.
• Provide facilities funding for home-based care providers so children in their care have access to facilities of comparable quality as those in center- based care. 
• Invest in facility expansion for early learning care, with prioritization for historically underserved communities, such as rural and tribal communities, child care deserts, and communities that experience systemic barriers to accessing child care. Expansion of facilities should strengthen the mixed delivery system.
• Expand eligibility requirements and streamline enrollment processes to support access for more affordable ELC and remove unnecessary barriers, such as implementing easy, non-intrusive forms and multiple methods of enrollment. Information should emphasize enrollment does not require sharing of citizenship status or immigration status, or work status of family members. Parents and families deserve to be treated with dignity and respect as they share their information across multiple systems and should have access to culturally and linguistically competent staff.
• Support improvements to ECE program structure to support needs of families
  • Flexible and extended hours and continuity of care to meet parents’ year-round needs with variable hours (e.g., early mornings, evenings, late nights). Hours and locations of care should be aligned with schedules and commutes of low-income families, including shift and seasonal work.
  • Support for families’ basic needs such as transportation (e.g., between child care settings, and solutions for families in rural and tribal communities or child care deserts), nutritious meals and snacks, and settings which support potty training.

• Ensure support for dual language learners in subsidized care settings. Prioritize funding and linguistically accessible information, training, and professional development for providers of dual language early learning and care programs, particularly for monolingual providers of a language other than English. Children of essential workers are predominantly from families of color who speak languages other than English. Culturally and linguistically responsive dual language programs provide the foundation for overall language, cognitive, and healthy identity development.
• Provide funding and training for providers to support virtual learning and fulfill technology needs of young children and school-aged students. As school districts engage in distance and hybrid learning, families are looking to after-school providers for full-day care. Providers need funding to be able to hire an assistant to support distance learning as they serve school-aged children alongside young children in their care. 
• Apply strengths-based approaches and protective factors to provider professional development and  a support system for providers themselves. Specific, trauma-informed, professional development opportunities for caring for children exposed to the criminal justice and foster care systems are needed to ensure there is adequate care for children of all backgrounds.
  • Providers should learn from families about a child’s home experiences and family, cultural, and community contexts (e.g., home language, cultural norms) to help them navigate and bridge home and early childhood environments. This can be done through conversations such as family interviews.
  • Integrate family context and build on the children’s strengths and needs by incorporating the family’s cultural practices into the child care setting. This includes leveraging the child’s assets and individualizing the care, so it supports each individual’s learning and development.
  • Foster partnerships and build community by offering numerous and continual opportunities for family involvement that fosters trust. This entails creating spaces for families to convene and share resources to support their child’s learning.
• Invest in mental health support for providers and families.

This graph looks at the percentage of families who have broadband internet, such as cable, fiber optic or DSL, in their homes. Families need this type of internet to use virtual tools and communication platforms such as Zoom. It’s important to distinguish the type of internet families have access to, because if a household has basic internet without high-speed connection, it contributes to the widening digital divide. In Broadway/Manchester, East L.A. and Watts/Willowbrook, nearly half of the families living in these communities do not have internet access needed for video conferencing.

Why this matters: With the pandemic forcing massive closures, families, and children have had to rely on the internet to access a host of educational resources. Children living without internet access are in danger of incurring a bigger learning loss and this disparity in digital access is driving a widening disparity in education outcomes. Several social welfare programs also transitioned to remote access as stay-at-home orders came into effect. Unfortunately, the families who likely need social assistance the most are also least likely to have internet access, widening the gap between need and service.

Remote learning and child care requires families to have reliable internet as well as sufficient devices for everyone who is learning or working remotely from home. The graph below shows the percentage of households without a computer, smartphone, or tablet at home. Best Start households are generally less likely to own devices capable of using the internet for learning than households overall throughout L.A. County.

Why this matters: Families with children ranging in age are likely to prioritize giving a school-aged child access to a device for remote learning, and not a child age five or under. This results in younger children not being able to access early learning care and engagement, which can impact their educational foundation and early brain development.

Households with more than one school-aged child may require multiple technical devices during remote learning. Children age six and under who usually go to early child care may have remote programming that requires access to a device. Families with a child under the age of six and between the age of six and seven who have limited technological devices are likely to prioritize ensuring the children who are between the ages of 6-17 are able to use a technical device for remote learning. This leaves the younger child without access to any early child care programming, which is widely known to be crucial to the overall development of children.

Among households which have children under the age of 18, every Best Start geography has more households with both children under the age of six and between the ages of 6-17, versus households with only children under the age of six6. In L.A. County, households with younger children under the age of six versus children who are age six or under and between the ages of 6-18 are evenly split at 19.3% each. This shows the majority of households with children in Best Start geographies have multiple children, which is an important consideration when imagining how to support all families and children living in these Best Start communities.