Our Campaigns

What is the issue? 

There has ALWAYS been a critical need for child care, especially for families and providers of color who have been hardest hit by COVID-19. Child care should be a civil right, not a privilege dictated by social injustices and limitations.

What’s the solution?

The Child Care Law Center is co-sponsoring a bill by Assemblymember Gómez Reyes that is expected to be amended to financially liberate families with low incomes by implementing a new and equitable family fee schedule starting July 1, 2023. Called The Affordable Child Care Family Fees Act, this bill will ensure instant relief for parents and that child care providers are paid in full and don’t absorb the reduction in family fees. The Affordable Child Care Family Fees Act is a simple anti-poverty solution that gives families immediate relief by:

• Eliminating bureaucracy & streamlining systems
• Boosting wages of child care providers making near-poverty salaries
• Promoting family stability and supporting whole-family wellness by reducing toxic stress
• Putting money in the pockets of families who need it most

Right now, we have an opportunity to make a meaningful, ongoing change in child care and to address the systemic racist policies and underfunding in our system. Over 200 organizations and advocates signed on to support waiving family fees for child care. We stand together to heal the harm of an outdated family fees system that produces racist outcomes.

Read more and take action on the Affordable Child Care Family Fees Act page.

“The job of a good message is to make popular what we need said. The question for us is, ‘what do we wish people believed?’” – Anat Shenker Osorio

We are thrilled to announce the release of our ECE Advocates’ Toolkit for Effective Messaging! This toolkit offers guidance to educate and inspire action in the early childhood education community through clear and targeted messaging. Guiding advocates toward community and research-based communication strategies will help win more child care funding and ensure fair wages and nurturing care for child care providers and families.

Our partners in this 2-year project, cognitive linguist Anat Shenker-Osorio of ASO Communications, strategic communications firm, Lightbox Collaborative, and input from more than 30 organizations in Los Angeles, have collaborated with us to set the tone on the conversation of child care.

When we can advocate for child care as a racial justice issue and basic human right, we are shifting the frame through which we look at child care. Under our model, we should care for children because it’s the right thing to do for a just society, not because of future economic gain. Providers deserve fair wages to care for their own families and to repair the harm of racist child care policies. Children deserve to be seen, nurtured, and raised with dignity and love.

Please join us in our messaging journey by using this toolkit and sharing it with your partners and supporters.

Click here to read and download the full toolkit.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

Even as Derek Chauvin is found guilty of the murder of George Floyd, the police continue to murder Black and Brown people. Black people,  Asian Americans, and many individuals of color are made to feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods and workplaces. The policies in our society that favor white people in our country are deeply embedded.

For too long, our government has created policies that target and hurt Black individuals.  One example is the limitations recently placed on voter rights in Georgia. Another is the child care policies in effect today, which were written based on negative stereotypes of Black women. 

The Child Care Law Center’s mission is to make child care a civil right. We recognize injustice happening and we’re working to bring equity and justice to child care polices, for every family, child, and child care provider.

We know you share our value and support this work. 

TAKE ACTION: 

• Support us as we work to pass the Family Fee Pandemic Relief bill (AB 92),which begins to undo the deep harm caused by anti-Black child care policies.
• Take our 21 Day Challenge to learn about how child care is a racial justice issue.
• Check out the infographic Racist Roots of Child Care Law and Policy
• Use these resources to be a stronger ally to the Asian American and Pacific Islander community

TO THE AAPI COMMUNITY AND EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN IMPACTED AND HURT, WE SEE YOU AND STAND WITH YOU

The Child Care Law Center stands united with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to end the on-going racism that escalated into the horrific Atlanta shooting on March 16, 2021. In this hate crime where Asian American women were targeted, we say their names in reverence for their lives that were wrongfully taken.

Soon Chung Park, 74
Hyun Jung Grant, 51
Suncha Kim, 69
Yong Ae Yue, 63
Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33
Xiaojie Tan, 49
Daoyou Feng, 44
Paul Andre Michels, 54
Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30

This event is an egregious continuation of the dangerous actions and rhetoric used against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, another mark following the nearly 150% growth^[1] in hate crimes against the AAPI community since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, called the “China flu” by the vindictive and uninformed.

The events in the past year, and those that occurred in Atlanta is another example in the pattern of anti-Asian hate in American history. From the Chinese Exclusion Act, to the WWII Japanese internment camps, to the limitation of the 5th Preference, to the “model minority” myth, the Asian American experience has been marred by pain and rejection.

The Child Care Law Center is an advocate for all child care providers and families, and we serve diverse communities including communities of color, immigrant communities, and people with the least resources. We recognize the slavery origins of child care and how anti-Black and anti-immigrant policies have contributed to the unfair pay and lack of protection for those who work the hardest to serve our children.

As the only legal center addressing issues in the child care field, we commit ourselves to the work of removing anti-Black and anti-Brown laws and policies that uphold the racist systems in child care and prevent equitable access to services and pay.

We extend our hands, hearts, and voices to the AAPI community in solidarity, comfort, and support. We rise on behalf of all those suffering to address and combat the poison of racism in our country that continues to let events like these happen against any community. The pain in the AAPI community is not unique or singular, but shared by all communities bearing injustices.

Our work is only one piece in the answer on how to dismantle these racist systems. We stand together in strength to weather what is to come. We will overcome oppression, xenophobia, hate, and racism. We will heal and find peace.

Sincerely,

Rachel Boyce, Chair & Lisa Holder, Vice Chair

Child Care Law Center Board of Directors

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^[1] Review the Anti-Asian Prejudice March 2020 fact sheet by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism here.

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We have compiled a list of resources to help your understanding and conversations during these trying times, to view the list please click here.