Dignified Pay for Quality Care: What New York’s Family Child Care Providers Need to Thrive
As the recent, historic mayoral election campaign demonstrated, the soaring costs and insufficient availability of quality child care continue to be matters of paramount importance to New Yorkers. They’re also likely to top the agenda when the New York State Legislature reconvenes in January, 2026.
Nevertheless, until now, what’s been missing from discussions of early childhood education have been insights and ideas coming from the women – and they are overwhelmingly immigrant women and women of color – who are its frontline providers in New York City.
Today, the Center for New York City Affairs (CNYCA) at The New School begins to fill that gap with the release of a major new report: “Dignified Pay for Quality Care: What New York’s Family Child Care Providers Need to Thrive.”
Almost two years in the making, it draws on the largest-ever independent survey of family child care providers in New York, and one of the most in-depth such studies nationally. It was conducted in three languages across all five boroughs – and amplified by extensive follow-up focus group discussions.
It presents a brisk but thorough description of the operation of these small, home-operated businesses, detailing – often in the words of the providers themselves – how they market, perform, and price their services, meet expenses, and interact with a panoply of regulatory agencies and the families that they serve. And it concludes with a range of recommendations, including a clear “five-part policy package for stable, high-quality, home-based early childhood education.”
The report was generously funded by the Robin Hood Foundation