Home-Based Childcare Centers Fill a Critical Void

In 1996, a major federal bill called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was passed, imposing stricter work requirements and time limits for those receiving public assistance. 

One group that found themselves hard hit by the bill were mothers, especially single mothers of very young children. They had to find jobs, but if those jobs didn’t pay a living wage, as they often didn’t, it was impossible to afford high-quality childcare in their communities.

A couple of years later, Janna Wagner, Ed.M.’98, moved back home to New Haven, Connecticut, after graduating from the Ed School and working for Boston Public Schools Center for Leadership Development. She felt deeply committed to the city and still had lots of connections there.

One of them was a friend, Jessica Sager, who pitched an education idea to her: Let’s create a program where moms could bring their babies with them while they trained to become childcare providers. It would satisfy the welfare bill’s work requirement and give women employable skills while also allowing them to take care of their own children.

Wagner, with her new Ed School degree and a couple of years teaching in the South Bronx, New York, behind her, plus a commitment to women’s rights, jumped at the chance. She and Sager started with six moms and six babies in a small apartment in a housing development in New Haven.

“The women would spend half of the day learning the theory of how children grow and learning how you set up a high-quality early education space,” Wagner says. “And then the other half of the day, they were actually doing the childcare so that if we were talking about curriculum and the terrific twos, those terrific twos were downstairs being terrific.”

Eventually the nonprofit, which they named All Our Kin, created more training labs throughout the city. However, they found that graduates who wanted to branch out to start their own home-based childcare centers often struggled, in isolation, especially with paperwork and the logistics of running a business.

“We spent a year doing research on ways to support our graduates, and we came up with this idea of creating a family childcare network,” she says. “There were a few of them across the country, and we wanted to create one in Connecticut.” 

They closed the housing project program and started working directly with home-based childcare operators. Staff would visit, armed with books, professional development articles, and curriculum ideas. They held workshops on child development. On the business side, they offered licensing support and training on how to create contracts and keep good tax records. Offerings were available in English and Spanish.

Now, as All Our Kin celebrates 25 years, the nonprofit has become national. Although they still work directly with more than 1,000 home-based centers in Connecticut and New York, they also advocate for policy changes at the national level and provide technical assistance and training to partner organizations in 31 states across the country. Their approach has resulted in what they call “a triple win.” Family childcare providers succeed as business owners; working parents find stable, high-quality care for their children, often with more flexible hours than traditional daycares; and young children build a solid educational foundation for future success.

In September of this year, Wagner and her co-founder were awarded a $250,000 Heinz Award, which Wagner says they will pour back into the work. The award, given to six people each year, recognizes individuals who have a concern for humanity and a “gritty determination,” and whose work is producing an impact that endures.

Looking back after many years working in the early childhood education world, Wagner says the sector still has huge challenges — low wages, staff shortages, and the stubborn perception that early childcare is babysitting. Still, she also sees hope, especially in the undergraduates who take her Childcare, Society, and Public Policy class at Yale.

“A lot of the students are future principals and teachers, but they’re also future doctors, future researchers, future lawyers. They all come in thinking, 'Childcare, I don't know if this matters to me, but I'm intrigued,'” she says. “By the end of the class, they’re hardcore advocates for quality early care and education because they realize no matter what job, no matter what career, if they have a family or not, they will be impacted by the lack of investment or the investment in their early years.”

It’s that change in perception that’s critical, she says.

“We feel that it’s part of our job and responsibility at All Our Kin to change the narrative around early care and education, but specifically around family childcare, which can be seen as invisible care work that just happens,” she says. “We might not see this work because it's in people’s homes or apartments, but it keeps the economy going. And it fills a void that’s needed for a lot of working parents.”