Posts by Diane Benjamin

The 2024 Legislative session began on February 12. While this is the “short” session focused on bonding and policy, there will be some activity related to early childhood issues. Child Care Aware of Minnesota helps you stay informed about the latest child care and early education policy news. Each week during the legislative session, our…

Child Care Wayfinder is a one-stop navigation network for starting and growing child care programs. It provides encouragement, support, and connection to resources required for initial licensing and resources needed for sustaining or expanding currently licensed child care programs. It began in 2022 and operates through a system of local navigators in Child Care Aware…

Cara Luebke is the new Public Policy Coordinator at the Child Care Aware Coordinating Office. After minoring in child advocacy studies in college, Cara is returning to this work after completing a master’s program in Advocacy and Political Leadership and working in youth development and advocacy. Cara sees her position as supporting other advocates to…

Families need help finding child care, and our Parent Aware web, phone, and chat services provide free, personalized help. However, employers, job training programs, educational institutions, and many others also need child care for their employees, clients, and students. This is where Child Care Information Outreach Coordinator Deb Spaeth comes in. Deb describes her job…

Empower to Educate helps current and aspiring early childhood educators begin, advance, and sustain their career goals in child care. The purpose of the project is to increase the number of people entering the early childhood workforce by offering benefits such as a free training package, an education preparation stipend, job skills training, help accessing…

Nou Thao is the Associate Director of Programs at Child Care Aware of Minnesota. Nou joined the organization six months ago after managing school-age and early childhood programs for AmeriCorps. One of Nou’s most important roles is supporting the Child Care Aware district and regional coordinators throughout the state, including their efforts to build an…

Funds from the American Rescue Plan, launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, support monthly stabilization grants to child care programs in Minnesota. Here are a few facts from the federal Administration for Children and Families Office of Child Care (data through December 2022) :   8,230 child care programs received support 212,500 children potentially impacted $324.2…

As we head into a legislative session this January, we have summarized our activities for the previous fiscal year, July 2021 through June 2022. Here’s a look at Child Care Aware of Minnesota by the numbers: 37,835 parents completed child care searches at ParentAware.org 14,004 students took at least one Eager-to-Learn class 6,267 early educators…

Parent Aware has a mission to help families find the quality care and education their children need to succeed in school and life. Parent Aware Recruiters are a crucial part of building the program throughout the state. Alicia Bauman is the Recruiter for northwestern Minnesota, working remotely for Lakes and Prairies Community Action Partnership in…

Child Care Aware of America has issued a new report, “Demanding Change: Repairing Our Child Care System.” As the report states, “The pandemic illuminated how indispensable child care is for the well-being and economic security for our children, families, and communities, while simultaneously revealing the system’s many shortcomings. Child care has been underfunded for decades,…

In August, Nikki Graf started a new position as Child Care Aware of Minnesota’s (CCAoMN) Public Policy Specialist. In this role, Nikki supports the CARE Fellows program and will provide help tracking legislation, organizing testimony, and networking with advocates during legislative sessions. Our Communications Director, Diane Benjamin, recently spoke with Nikki about her new role.…

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development has now published two in-depth articles documenting both the very low wages in the early childhood profession, particularly in family child care, and analyzing a proposed equitable wage scale for the field, developed by the Transforming Minnesota’s Early Childhood Workforce project. Child Care Aware of Minnesota participates…

After two years of hard work, the Minnesota Family Child Care Task Force has released their final report. This task force included family child care providers from both Greater Minnesota and the metro area, representatives from family child care associations, county licensors, the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the Children’s Cabinet, parents, legislators, other stakeholders,…

We are proud to announce that our Executive Director, Ann McCully, was a co-winner of this year’s Nancy Latimer Award! The other winner was also from our system – Dianne Haulcy from Think Small. Here are Ann’s remarks from the award presentation: I want to thank the Early Childhood Funders for this award. I am…

Reducing the rules that regulate child care is often offered as a solution to declining numbers of family child care programs. Late last year, Child Care AwareÒ of America published a one-page issue brief, The Child Care Supply Crisis: Why Deregulation is Not the Answer. It showed that the number of family child care programs…

A statewide poll of registered voters in Minnesota has lots of good news for supporters of quality child care. The Center for American Progress commissioned the poll last summer to better understand how voters think about and respond to messages about child care. They found the following in Minnesota: Funding child care and early education…