There is both historic and emerging data and research that is crystalizing the ways our child care issues are impacting our kids, families, economies and communities. We will aggregate both below.
Colorado Child Care narrative Survey
Only 8% of Coloradans rank child care among the state’s top three issues, and 73% haven’t seen any recent messaging about it — leaving just 45% feeling personally impacted by the issues this system is facing. But there’s a clear opportunity: Mentioning anything about the importance of child care or the issues facing the system raises that sense of personal impact from 45% to 67%. These findings come from the 2026 Colorado child care narrative survey by Corona Insights. They survey also highlights how to better engage 9 key audiences often left out of child care conversations.
Founded by military families for military families, Operation Child Care Project has been piloting a Basic Allowance for Child Care (BACC) model for years. Without government or contractor funding, BACC is a fundamental reimagining of child care systems, dedicated to ensuring military families have access to safe, reliable child care. Focused on family choice, cost efficiency, and mission readiness, read their findings from this pilot.
Using administrative data from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, this report presents findings from an analysis of wages among ECE professionals in center-based programs during the 2022–2023 school year. It serves as a foundation for CDEC to design, test, and evaluate targeted interventions aimed at increasing compensation and promoting workforce stability.
A well-functioning, affordable child care system is essential to the economy. Yet, as the nonpartisan research organization Common Sense Institute explores, access to and affordability of quality child care continues to be a pressing concern in Colorado, hampering many parents from entering the workforce or remaining fully or consistently employed.
In 2023, Moms First and Boston Consulting Group worked to document the return on investment when companies invest in child care benefits for their employees. This report underscores the undeniable correlation between robust child care benefits and a thriving workforce, highlighting how companies stand to gain immensely from investing in the well-being of working parents.
