Overcoming Barriers to Expanding High-Quality Early Care and Education
High-quality early care and education (ECE) programs have been proven to create positive outcomes for children—especially among those living in poverty. Yet many children from low-income families have a hard time accessing quality child care, and miss the critical developmental growth and foundation needed for academic and life success. Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) is pleased to share our new report, Overcoming Barriers to Expanding High-Quality Early Care & Education in Southeastern Pennsylvania, funded by the William Penn Foundation. Based on NFF’s research and analysis of 147 nonprofit child care centers in Southeastern Pennsylvania, the report demystifies the financial, business and systemic barriers to expanding high-quality care—and begins to identify how to increase access for more children.
Our research revealed:
- Providers often face financial disincentives to operate programs that meet high-quality standards, given the true costs to deliver quality care and the limitations of revenue opportunities.
- Existing revenue sources rarely allow high-quality programs, particularly those serving low-income children, to address the relatively high fixed costs of care.
- Government reimbursements do not cover the full costs of care for low-income children—leaving a structural operating gap for each child served (this gap increases with each additional child served).
- Efforts to scale and grow high-quality programs will need to address the additional, permanent funding requirements for growing programs in order to maintain operational sustainability.
Building on these findings, NFF identified actions that stakeholders can take to improve access to quality early care and education. The report details short-and long-term recommendations, including:
- Policymakers: There is a need to address the systemic mismatch between how capital currently flows into the ECE sector and the transformative educational outcomes that are expected from these dollars.
- Funders: As many states prioritize expanding high-quality ECE access for low-income children, it is essential that philanthropic funding streams help providers achieve the major organizational change associated with growth or quality improvement.
- ECE Providers: With the public’s growing interest in high-quality ECE expansion, it is especially important for providers to employ sound financial planning and data-driven decision-making practices.
Now more than ever, we must challenge the underlying ideologies and assumptions about ECE, which directly influence the way in which the overarching system is funded and financed. Our hope is that articulating these issues will support a data-driven and comprehensive dialogue between policymakers, funders, providers and parents, and that this dialogue will advance the ECE sector, giving more children access to excellent care during the critical early days of life.
As NFF, the William Penn Foundation, and many other friends in the field continue to support quality care expansion and positive child outcomes, we hope that you'll find the report useful and share it with others invested in high-impact social change.
Click here for a free webinar exploring the report's findings and recommendations.