From improving on existing child care assistance programs to bolstering child care worker recruitment, a new policy report lists dozens of recommendations for state lawmakers to improve Kentucky's child care system.
Made in collaboration with dozens of advocacy and business organizations across the state, the report published with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce recommends streamlining regulations, retooling child care assistance programs and filling gaps in state data.
Charles Aull, the vice president of policy with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, said that there has been interest in pursuing child care solutions in previous legislative sessions, and while he said there was some “good progress,” he also saw some “decision paralysis.”
“We brought together folks who are advocates, we brought together child care providers, business leaders, and we also brought into the room folks who were maybe a little more skeptical of this issue to find out where we are all aligned,” Aull said.
The report lists two key statistics as evidence the state needs to invest in child care solutions, pointing to the state’s relatively low workforce participation rate at 80.6% and the fact that less than half of incoming Kentucky kindergartners are ready to start school, according to the Kids Count Data center.
Child care providers faced a cliff in 2024 as federal stabilization grants sunset with the end of the pandemic. During that budget session, Republican Sen. Danny Carroll from Paducah sponsored a bill that would have provided $300 million of funding for child care, but it failed to gain traction.
The left-leaning Kentucky Center for Economic Policy found in a 2024 survey that a number of child care centers would have to raise their rates to make up for the loss of funding. Kentucky families responded to another 2024 survey saying they spend hundreds of dollars per week on child care. Aull said child care costs rose across the state as federal grants ended.
The industry is facing other challenges too, including workforce shortages and reimbursement rates that don’t match the cost of care. Republican Rep. Samara Heavrin from Leitchfield said different groups were calling for different solutions to the child care crisis and felt a working group was needed to find a consensus.
“We've got to have these voices to be able to tell us where our dollars would be best spent to help Kentuckians,” said Heavrin, who chairs the House Families and Children Committee. “I feel like the working group allowed a majority of the groups to get all on the same page and say, ‘Okay, here's what we're working towards.’”
Heavrin said she is interested in several of the policies outlined in the report and appreciated the focus on “strategic investments” in the child care space. She said bolstering child care will definitely be part of the discussion in the 2026 legislative session.
Aull with the Chamber of Commerce said the report emphasizes strengthening existing child care support programs.
“That's obviously something that was a burden for a whole lot of families, and we've seen that happen throughout the state,” Aull said. “That's another reason why we think programs like making sure CCAP is a strong program.”
Kentucky’s Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP, gives monetary support to help low-income families place their children in child care. Kentucky expanded who can access the program after the pandemic. Report authors say the state should continue to maintain its current higher income threshold, and help Kentuckians if they have to transition out of the program.
It also calls on lawmakers to consider allowing providers to receive the maximum reimbursement rate from the state even if that amount is higher than what private-pay families might be paying.
Mandy Simpson Marler, a registered lobbyist for Community Coordinated Child Care and the Child Care Council of Kentucky, said CCAP is pivotal in making sure parents have access to child care, but doesn’t come close to reflecting the full cost of caring for children. She says the state has increased the reimbursement rate, but that reflects the market rate rather than what families can actually afford.
“What we found is that rate is not matching in any way close to the true cost of care,” Simpson Marler said. “The market only reflects what families can pay.”
Simpson Marler said she also hopes the state will invest more in recruitment for child care educators to help shrink the lengthy waitlists many child care facilities are looking at — some more than a year long.
“You are also likely to find that they have a classroom or half a classroom, or a handful of seats that are empty, and that is because there are no educators to serve the children who could be in those seats, who could be in those classrooms,” Simpson Marler said.
The report also suggests fully outsourcing the Employee Child Care Assistance Partnership, a program created in a 2022 bill that allows employers and the state to pool money to help already employed Kentuckians who are not eligible for subsidies pay for child care. The program, which is designed to benefit middle-income families, has thus far suffered from low enrollment. Aull said the program has proven difficult to administer.
“It's also a difficult program to promote and make people aware of … [We want to] do everything we can to make it technologically sophisticated, make it very easy to use, and also make sure we have steps in place to go out and promote it,” Aull said. “We think having a third party administer that program could be a really effective way to do that.”
Universal pre-K was notably missing from the list of proposed solutions put forward in the report. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has made providing universal pre-K key to his platform since first running for governor in 2019, but the Republican supermajority legislature has shown no appetite to fund such a cost program.
Aull said the report focused on the private, regulated child care sector, not programs like publicly-run ones like Head Start or a possible universal pre-K. He said they also were looking only at “viable solutions” that can be accomplished in the short-term — not creating a new system.
“You already have about 2,000 child care providers, small businesses, nonprofits that are operating throughout the state. That's a really good, strong infrastructure that already exists,” Aull said. “Our mind immediately went to trying to help children and families in our economy right now.”
Aull said research shows that, in the long run, high quality child care sets children up for long-term success. And in the short-term, parents who have to stay home to take care of their children may are likely unable to work themselves.
“Parents of young children, if they want to participate in the workforce, need safe, healthy places for their kids to be educated, to be cared for while they're at work, and if they don't have access to that, or if they can't afford it, that's going to affect their decisions on whether or not to participate in the workforce,” Aull said.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
