During the COVID-19 pandemic, home-based child care (HBCC) programs faced many challenges to operating their businesses, affecting their ability to offer safe, stable, and affordable care to families. Further, licensed child care homes declined by 9.6 percent from 2019 to 2021.[1] In response to pandemic-related challenges in the child care sector, Congress allocated more than $52 billion to states beginning in March 2020 and extending through the first year of the pandemic, with the goal of stabilizing child care and support families with young children, including support to HBCC programs.
Accumulating evidence suggests that federal COVID-19 relief funding was somewhat protective against child care and early education program closures. A new analysis by Child Trends examines whether—and what types of—relief funds helped reduce closures among Black-owned HBCC programs, specifically, during the first year of the pandemic.