America’s Child-care Crisis: Rethinking an Essential Business

The child-care industry, essential to American families and to the American economy, is on the verge of collapse. Before COVID-19 struck, the child-care industry faced funding issues and staffing dilemmas, while families struggled to find, or simply afford, quality child care. The reality is that COVID-19 has only exacerbated the challenges of the already-fragile child-care ecosystem. America's Child-Care Crisis takes a hard look at the current state of the industry and explores how to save this critical service by:

• Identifying the systemic changes needed
• Altering public opinion of the field
• Securing state and federal dollars for the private sector
• Prioritizing the growth of family child-care homes
• Educating parents on quality care and helping them access it
• Obtaining business support

Child-care is a system that is too critical to fail. We cannot survive without it. Together, we can reimagine the child-care industry for all Americans whose livelihoods depend on it.

Sarah Taylor Vanover, EdD, has been working in the field of early childhood for over twenty years. Dr. Sarah Taylor Vanover completed her doctoral research on what families look for when selecting childcare for their children. She is an active trainer in Kentucky and surrounding states, and she frequently speaks at conferences on topics like quality childcare indicators, language development in the early childhood classroom, and the importance of quality infant and toddler care in early childhood education. For the past several years, Dr. Vanover has focused her work and research on assessing quality early childhood programs for health and safety requirements and supporting school-readiness skills. She is currently the director of the Division of Child Care for the Commonwealth of Kentucky and is an active member of several policy teams looking at ways to save the US child-care system.

Dr. Vanover lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband, Rob, and their two sons, Jack and James.