Child Care For All2022-07-13T15:11:53-07:00

We believe in a world where every child has access to quality early learning and care.

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OUR WORK

Child care and early education are critical pieces of our human infrastructure, and we need to act like it.

Child care is the only way many working parents can balance career success with family responsibilities. It’s especially crucial to bringing women back into the workforce and for California’s economy to fully recover from this pandemic. In our first contract with the state, we began the process of stabilizing the child care industry by securing the first significant pay increases for providers in years. But improving pay is just one way we are working to retain and recruit new providers.

Our contract also set-up Joint Labor Management Committees. They offer a pathway to continue to address health care, retirement, paid-time-off and other issues impacting our livelihoods and parents’ access to quality care. By ensuring that dedicated providers have the same basic benefits and protections as other essential workers, current providers will be able to keep their doors open, more providers will be attracted to the profession and working parents will have more options for quality, affordable care.

Increase Available Child Care by Ensuring Child Care Jobs Are Good Jobs

What We're Asking For

Providers closed their doors by the thousands during the pandemic, hastening a decline in family child care capacity in California, and openings in 2021 have not significantly reversed this trend. In addition to the significant first pay increase won in the CCPU contract set to go into effect January 1, 2022, providers are continuing to demand their jobs be good jobs so that experienced providers will stay in the field and more providers will open. Specifically , CCPU providers are prioritizing the following areas to address:

Family child care providers currently have limited access to affordable, quality health care and no job-provided health insurance options. Despite the constant exposure to germs and viruses that comes from working with young children all day, serving essential worker families, and working through a pandemic, providers who get sick must either forgo care, go into debt to pay for medical bills or simply close their doors.

Under the current system, providers can take only ten days of paid time off per year. This includes holidays, time for continuing education and training, and time needed to rest and recover from illness. Moreover, it is virtually impossible to secure paid-time-off to care for a sick family member, bereavement or other personal emergencies that so many of us face.

Without savings or a retirement plan, providers who dedicate years teaching and caring for our children are forced to spend their senior years in poverty, must continue to work long past retirement age, or leave the field to be able to build for a secure retirement.

Make Quality Child Care More Affordable

What We're Asking For

All children should have equal opportunity to get the support they need to succeed in school, regardless of race, income, or zip code. Fund more child care vouchers for families, a permanent end to family fees, and more child care capacity statewide.  Expand hard-to-find child care for families needing help on weekends and evenings or for children who have special needs, by increasing pay for providers offering these services. 

Improve and Streamline How California’s Child Care System Works

What We're Asking For

Improve transparency and communication between the state, local organizations, parents, and providers so that everyone receives the same information regarding state policies. Ensure there are no interruptions in care by eliminating any administrative delays in paying providers. 

We share Governor Gavin Newsom’s vision of building a stronger early care and education system and welcome the opportunity to work with his Administration to build on our contract victories in the months ahead through the Labor Management Committee process that CCPU providers and Governor Newsom agreed to in our historic first contract.

Increase Available Child Care by Ensuring Child Care Jobs Are Good Jobs

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Make Quality Child Care More Affordable

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Improve and Streamline How California’s Child Care System Works

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Historic Agreement Reached!

On June 30, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the new state budget that gives child care providers the funding they need for their urgent healthcare needs and develops a plan for long-term retirement support! The agreement will go before Child Care Providers United members for a ratification vote. CCPU is still finalizing the details of these programs and when providers can start receiving these new benefits.

Learn About the Agreement

Tell Your Story

Providers are often seen as extended family members to the families they serve. We want to know what your provider means to you and how they have helped your family and children thrive.

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CHILD CARE MATTERS

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, child care providers were already essential workers.

They’ve stepped up to care for the kids of front-line workers and filled in the learning gap for school-aged children impacted by distance learning. They’re the bedrock of working families—especially among Black and Latino communities.

Learn Why Child Care is Essential

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WHO WE ARE

We are Child Care Providers United—

a union of over 40,000 child care providers throughout California working in partnership with parents, early childhood education advocates and our state legislators to fix the state’s child care crisis, improve our profession and the quality of care through policy advocacy, grassroots community organizing, and our collective voice. We are guided by the belief that all children and families should have access to quality early education and care.

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