Network Documents

Presentation at June 11 Learning Community Meeting

This suite of documents provides resources for opening and maintaining a quality, licensed child care business. Files attached include: 1. US Small Business Administration (SBA): How to Start a Quality Child Care 2. Operating Budgets: Child Care 3. Start-up Costs Worksheet: Child Care 4. Operational Budget & Income Expense Worksheet: Child Care 5. Financial Modeling Examples: Child Care 6. Colorado Licensing Fees: Child Care

This document gives us an idea of the different types of licenses issued by CDHS for providing child care, and the fees associated with each license type.

High-quality early care and education for children from birth to kindergarten entry is critical to positive child development and has the potential to generate economic returns, which benefit not only children and their families but society at large. Despite the great promise of early care and education, it has been financed in such a way that high-quality early care and education have only been available to a fraction of the families needing and desiring it and does little to further develop the early-care-and-education (ECE) workforce. It is neither sustainable nor adequate to provide the quality of care and learning that children and families need - a shortfall that further perpetuates and drives inequality. In light of these challenges, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine were asked to convene a committee of experts to study how to fund early care and education for children from birth to kindergarten entry that is accessible, affordable for families, and of high quality, including a well-qualified and adequately supported workforce consistent with the research and vision outlined in the 2015 report by a study committee of the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation (the Transforming report). Transforming the financing structure for early care and education to meet the needs of all children and families and the workforce that provides services will require greater harmonization and coordination among financing mechanisms and significant mobilization of financial and other resources. The necessary changes will not come quickly, easily, or without cost. 

Early care and education is a complex industry that is driven both by elements of a public good and the private market. Its public missions are to provide high-quality care and education to children and to enable parents to work and contribute to the larger economy. Some providers operate entirely on parental fees, while others use a combination of philanthropic and public funding sources to balance budgets. The industry includes private, public, and nonprofit entities, as well as non-licensed care providers outside the formal market structure, and each of these are working to varying degrees toward goals of profit, safety, education, and quality. Given this complex environment, key early care and education leaders and policy makers in Colorado, including Early Milestones Colorado, the Colorado Department of Education (Office of Early Learning and School Readiness), and the Colorado Department of Human Services (Office of Early Childhood), created the Transforming the Early Childhood Workforce project as a public-private partnership to develop and test sustainable approaches to strengthening the early childhood workforce in the state. As part of this effort, they wanted to better understand how the early care and education sector functions within Colorado's economy, while also exploring the factors that influence how the industry operates and the effect of those operations on the industry's labor force. The report is organized around these core topic areas: 1. Describe the role of the early care and education sector in Colorado's economy 2. Explore the cost of early care and education in Colorado 3. Explain the implications of low wages and turnover in Colorado's early care and education industry 4. Identify the extent to which Colorado's early care and education sector operates as a market-based industry   Links (below) to: Key Takeaways (2 pages) Executive Summary (5 pages) Full Report (63 pages)