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About Us
Strengthening the system we have today and building a better one for tomorrow.
America’s child care system is holding our country back and hurting everyone—children, families, child care providers, communities, and employers. The challenges are well documented. What the country lacks is not more evidence of the problem—but a clear, actionable path forward.
To meet this moment, Child Care Aware® of America has launched the Child Care Trust™—an independent, national catalyst for designing the child care system of the future. It will be led by nationally renowned child care expert, Linda K. Smith.
The Child Care Trust™ will design the future of child care and build a blueprint for how to get there. Backed by Child Care Aware® of America, the Trust will develop real-world solutions—informed by data and research—for how America funds, organizes, and sustains quality child care.
Together, the Trust and Child Care Aware® of America advance a shared vision through their distinct roles: strengthening the system we have today and building a better one for tomorrow.
The Trust is moving beyond describing problems and toward clear, workable solutions.
Grounded in parent choice and shared responsibility across public and private sectors, the Trust is not another research initiative. It brings together leaders in economics, early education, business, workforce, and public policy to solve the system’s hardest structural problems. The Trust is designed to produce usable policy, align unlikely partners, and move solutions into practice.
Define how a functioning child care system should work and how to build it.
- Develop financing and governance models that reflect the true cost of quality child care.
- Identify sustainable funding pathways across federal, state, and private sectors.
- Design models that support affordability for families and fair compensation for the workforce.
Produce policy-ready solutions that can be easily adopted.
- Craft model legislation, policy frameworks, and implementation guides
- Share tested approaches that can be adapted across contexts
- Create a national repository of proven and emerging practices
Bring the right actors to the same table.
- Convene leaders across business, government, and research to co-design actionable solutions
- Accelerate adoption by engaging those who control funding, policy, and delivery systems
Drive uptake of solutions.
- Translate research into clear, compelling options for decision-makers
- Use media, partnerships, and convenings to drive uptake
- Position actionable solutions—not just the crisis—at the center of the national agenda
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