The federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), administered through individual states, subsidizes access to affordable early care and education (ECE) for families with low incomes. CCDF subsidies can support parents’ ability to work and positively impact their children’s early academic and social development. While many Latino families—who tend to have high rates of parental employment but also low levels of income—stand to benefit from these subsidies, they are currently underserved by the CCDF program in most states. Hispanic children make up approximately 35 percent of those eligible for subsidized care nationwide, but just 20 percent of the population served. This is because available CCDF funding serves only a fraction (16%) of eligible children and because a smaller proportion of eligible Hispanic children receive subsidized care, relative to eligible children from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.
This brief—as part of a larger multi-state study of CCDF access for Hispanic families3—aims to improve our understanding of families’ access to subsidies in California, including barriers and facilitators. To that end, we report on findings from our survey of California child care subsidy workers in Spring 2022, which asks frontline staff and supervisors about their implementation practices and experiences, with a focus on their interactions with Hispanic families. Staff reported on multiple aspects of the subsidy application and eligibility determination process that may present access challenges for some families, as well as their agency’s outreach and communication strategies. California is home to the largest number of Latino children living in households with low incomes. As in most other states, however, Latino families in California are underrepresented among those receiving subsidized care despite being overrepresented among groups with high need for access to affordable care.
Insights from community-level staff who implement subsidized child care and interact with families can help identify barriers and facilitative practices, thereby informing ongoing system work in California and federal and state efforts to reduce administrative burdens and improve the efficiency, equity, and efficacy of government service delivery.