In the last half of 2025, Gertrudis Espinal watched as, one by one, children left the child care program she runs out of her home in the Bronx. The city had run out of voucher money that her families needed to pay for care, and by February, she only had seven children enrolled – half as many in the previous year.
“We should be focusing on teaching the kids right now,” Espinal said, rather than having to fight for funding. “It’s their future.”
In New York City, most of the low-income families who use a child care voucher enroll their children in home-based programs. But those small programs are uniquely vulnerable to economic shocks because they enroll fewer children than center-based programs and have less access to grants and resources than other child care settings.
Some organizations are trying to help with various initiatives designed for home-based providers. Espinal is one of 50 Bronx-based child care providers who benefited from a guaranteed income pilot program called the Thriving Providers Project, a national program run in six states by the nonprofit Home Grown, which supports home-based child care.
Beginning in June 2024, Espinal received $1,000 monthly, paid out every two weeks for 18 months, which she could use with no restrictions. She used the funds to buy supplies, like books, paint, and a sand and water sensory table for the children in her care, and paid electricity bills, which in the past she’d had to put on her credit card.
“It gave me peace of mind,” said Espinal. “I have the money, so your mind is focusing on what you need to, [like] training and teaching these kids to develop their skills and the foundation,” she said. “You’re in peace of mind, so you are projecting a more peaceful and a better environment to the kids.”
Educators and experts say this kind of support, in particular programs that help boost wages for employees, could be life-changing for providers and help stabilize the shaky industry.
“Family child care is still waiting for compensation that is matching the true cost of care,” said Lara Kyriakou, senior director of policy at All Our Kin, a nonprofit that supports family child care providers and that partnered with Home Grown to run the Bronx pilot program. “Educators are really concerned about being able to take care of their own personal and family needs, and being able to meet the needs for their program and the children they care for.”
Research that Stanford University’s Center on Early Childhood conducted on Thriving Providers shows that the predictable funds allow early educators to pay off debts and buy food; in some cases, it’s the difference between keeping their businesses open or closed. Child care income can fluctuate based on enrollment, attendance and state voucher policies, which makes reliable income more critical, experts say. With predictable funds, “you are able to just continue functioning without any concerns about funding,” said Kyriakou. That supports providers but also enables a “continuity of care and a stable, nurturing environment” for children.
Elizabeth Olivo, a Bronx-based home-based provider who also participated in the Thriving Providers Project, said she used the stipends to purchase essential materials and supplies for her program.
“Nearly every major operating expense for my family child care program has increased, making it more challenging to maintain stability while continuing to provide quality care for families,” Olivo said by email. (Recent research shows operating costs have increased for providers across the country, who in many cases are passing those costs on to families.)
Olivo fears what will happen to the industry if the current status quo continues. “If these rising costs continue without additional support,” she said, “many family child care providers may struggle to remain open.”
Research shows even modest cash bonuses and stipend programs for providers in states like California and Virginia improved chronically low early educator retention rates. In the District of Columbia, which offered a wage supplement of $10,000 to $14,000 per year to home and center-based providers beginning in 2022, research found child care employment increased by 7 percent within two years.
New York child care advocates are also hoping that $500 million for child care that was included in a Senate budget proposal will make it into the state’s final budget. That money could provide additional compensation to child care providers to boost their chronically low wages. Nationwide, their median salary is around $13 an hour.
Child care providers may have to continue looking to private initiatives such as Thriving Providers, and to cities and states for support, as opposed to the federal government. In early April, President Trump said “it’s not possible” for the federal government to pay for child care costs.
“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too,” Trump said.
In recent months, however, many states have started slashing such funds, creating longer waitlists for families in need of payment assistance and forcing programs to close. The District of Columbia’s pay equity initiative is also at risk of elimination.
For Espinal, her business is struggling again now that the payment program has ended. As children lost their vouchers and her enrollment dropped, she had to let her assistants go. Once again, she is worried about being able to pay her expenses.
“We really need more of this funding, not just in a project, but consistently,” she said. “Early childhood needs to be funded so we can thrive, so we don’t have to be fighting to thrive.”
This story about home child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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