Supporting Families: Expanding Access to Affordable Child Care
As the District’s families and early learning programs continued to rebound from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment in the DC Child Care Subsidy Program rose by 15 percent in FY24 with more than 5,750 children served as of October 2024 – compared to 5,043 children in October 2023.
Increasing Compensation for Early Educators
Through the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, the District supports the ability of child care providers to increase compensation for the early childhood workforce. This support recognizes the high value we place on the educators who care for and educate our youngest children, and it maintains DC’s role as a national leader in high- quality early learning.
In FY24, we distributed more than $67 million to 365 child development facilities to raise wages for more than 3,600 early childhood educators. These funds have supported child care providers to recruit and retain child care staff and meet their staffing needs, helping to ensure services are available for families.
Focus on Child Care Quality
We updated Capital Quality designations for child care providers in April 2024, the first time since the pandemic. The percentage of child care providers with ratings of “Quality” or “High-Quality” went from 54 percent to 83 percent. This represents meaningful progress in improving the quality of child care available to District families.
Expanding Child Care Options for Children with Disabilities
An important child care need in DC is serving children with disabilities. To meet this need, we launched for the first time the Access to Quality Child Care for Children with Disabilities grant program to expand the supply of quality, accessible and affordable child care for children with disabilities. We are supporting four grantees to provide services for up to 78 infants and toddlers in FY25.
