Families

The Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP, helps eligible families pay for child care. Eligible families are those with low incomes, who have a child under 12 or a child with special needs who is 13 or 14, and who need help paying for child care to work, look for work, or attend school or training. Families can learn more, including how to apply, here.

Early Learning Scholarships help families who meet income eligibility requirements afford high-quality child care and early education programs. Scholarships are mainly available to families with children between the ages of three and four, with inclusion of younger children in some cases. Scholarships must be used at a program with a Parent Aware rating or one that will earn a rating within the next six months. For more information about Early Learning Scholarships, families can call Parent Aware at 888.291.9811 or contact their local scholarship administrator (PDF).

Head Start and Early Head Start are early childhood programs for pregnant women and eligible children from birth to age five. Families are eligible to participate if their income is at or below 100% of the federal poverty guideline, if they are eligible for public assistance or experiencing homelessness, and/or the child is in foster care. To find a Head Start or Early Head start program near you, visit the Head Start Locator or call 1-866-763-6481 (toll-free).

The Minnesota Assessment of Parenting for Children and Youth supports children in foster care, guardianship and adoption. The program helps cover costs of child care to make it easier for prospective foster parents, adoptive parents and relative custodians to access to quality child care.

Through MNBenefits, families can complete one online application, in 20 minutes or less, to apply for several programs: food assistance (SNAP), cash programs (including MFIP), emergency assistance, housing support, and child care assistance.

The Minnesota Postsecondary Child Care Grant Program supports student parents who are continuing their education after high school. Students with low incomes whose young children are in child care while they attend postsecondary classes are eligible. To apply, students must complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and a separate application for this program at the institution where they are enrolling.

The Parent Aware website offers information about other programs that can help your family pay for child care and early learning, including supports for parents or guardians in the National Guard or Army Reserve; local scholarships; and several tax relief plans and credits for families with young children.

This useful guide, available through Parent Aware, offers steps for choosing care, questions to ask programs, and things to look for as you visit early care and learning programs. This guide is available for download in English, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong, and print copies are available in English and Spanish through the form available here.

Parent Aware can help families search for care that meets their needs. You can search for care options using a variety of filters through the Parent Aware online search tool. You can also get assistance in English, Spanish, Hmong, or Somali by calling 888.291.9811.

Using the Department of Human Services’ Licensing Lookup, you can search for licensed child care centers, licensed family child care programs, or certified child care centers in your area.

Families can search for early care and education programs through Help Me Connect, an online portal where families can also search for many other services. This tool includes searches for Early Head Start or Head Start programs and school-based early learning programs.

Minnesota supports local Community Resource Hubs in communities around the state to make it easier for families to get what they need. Community Resource Hubs are partnerships with Tribal Nations and urban American Indian organizations, schools, counties, and community partners. Exact services vary by location, but may include help accessing early care and education, healthy development and screening, support for developmental and behavioral health concerns, disability services and resources, mental and physical health services, support with basic needs, and more.

• CDC: Operational Guidance for K-12 Schools and Early Care and Education Programs to Support Safe In-Person Learning
• Minnesota Department of Health COVID-19 Guidance for Schools and Child Care

Child Care Regulation Modernization 
In 2021, the Minnesota legislature passed legislation and allocated federal funding to support child care regulation modernization projects for both licensed family child care and child care centers (MN Laws 2021, First Special Session, Chapter 7, Article 2, sections 75 and 81). The regulation modernization projects support the development of three components: key indicator systems for abbreviated inspections; risk-based tiered violation systems; and revised licensing standards.

Alternative child care licensing models 
The Department of Human Services, in consultation with counties, child care providers, and other relevant stakeholders, is reviewing child care models that are not currently in state statutes, including standards related to age, group size, and capacity. This project is considering whether any models could address the state’s child care needs while protecting children’s safety, health, and well-being and make recommendations for implementing the models that meet these criteria. DHS will report recommendations to the legislature by January 1, 2023.

Early Childhood Governance and Financing Grant
The State of Minnesota received an Early Childhood Governance and Financing Grant through New Venture Fund. This three-year grant is supporting several projects to strengthen the financing and governance of early childhood programs in Minnesota, including analysis of Minnesota’s Children’s Fiscal Map to highlight spending on early childhood programs; pilot initiatives with partners in tribal communities around embedding language revitalization in early childhood programs; and evaluating impacts of the federal relief dollars Minnesota has invested in early childhood.

Preschool Development Grant
Minnesota’s Preschool Development Birth through Five grant is a partnership of the Minnesota Departments of Education, Health, Human Services, and the Children’s Cabinet to improve early childhood systems across the state. The three-year, $26.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services supports pregnant families and families with children age 5 and younger. The work began with a community needs assessment (PDF) and development of a strategic plan (summary) (PDF), both of which will be updated before the conclusion of the grant in December 2023. The strategic plan for the grant identified initiatives that are now being implemented, including: 

• Collaboration with tribal nations; 
• Development of Help Me Connect to help families connect to resources; 
• Grants through the Community Solutions Fund for Healthy Child Development; 
• Work to better coordinate eligibility and services for families to reduce duplicative applications; and 
• Efforts to support early care and education providers and the workforce.

Child Care Wayfinder: A one-stop navigation network for building and growing programs
People who want to start, sustain, or expand a licensed child care center or family child care program can now connect with Child Care Wayfinder, a statewide network designed to help new or existing providers find the information and resources they need. The program's website offers information and connection to resources, and the statewide network of navigators can support people through the process of starting, sustaining, or expanding a program.  

Empower to Educate
Empower to Educate is a workforce development program available through Child Care Aware of Minnesota. This program is open to individuals interested in beginning a career in early care and education. Empower to Educate offers personalized advice and support, free training, help with searching for a job, and a hiring bonus.

Supporting Family, Friend, and Neighbor child care providers
Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) child care providers offer legal non-licensed child care to many families. FFN providers are a frequent choice of care for parents with infants and toddlers, parents in diverse cultural and ethnic communities, and parents working non-standard hour jobs. To better support this group of providers, the Minnesota Department of Human Services recently directed $1 million in federal CARES Act resources to state and local agencies working with FFN providers. The funding will help agencies develop new FFN networks and strengthen existing ones, offer training and materials to providers, and connect providers to services and resources. You can learn about the organizations providing these supports to FFN providers in this grantee overview, and learn more about this funding opportunity in the FAQ document.

Grow Your Own Early Childhood Educator Pilot Programs
The Early Learning Services division in the Minnesota Department of Education, through the Preschool Development Grant, is contracting with seven government organizations to support Grow Your Own Early Childhood Educator Pilot Programs. The organizations will develop or expand a Grow Your Own Program to help participants gain the education requirements needed to enter or advance in the field of early childhood education. The organizations will share what works well to inform future Grow Your Own opportunities in Minnesota focused on the early childhood workforce. 

Child Care Shared Services Pilot
Shared services is a strategy to help smaller early care and education programs, often specifically family child care programs, achieve some of the benefits of scale by sharing some services or functions, such as purchasing materials, accounting or other office functions, substitutes, etc. The Minnesota Department of Human Services is supporting a pilot of this strategy through grants to two organizations that are testing different sets of shared services.

Early Care and Education Governance Report
At the direction of the Minnesota Legislature, the Minnesota Children’s Cabinet contracted with the State’s Management Analysis and Development team to create the Early Care and Education Governance Report, which was published in January 2022. The report documents options for early childhood governance structures, explaining benefits and drawbacks of each option and sharing examples from other states. The Children’s Cabinet, in partnership with several State agencies, is working on next steps to apply learnings from this report.

Minnesota Business Vitality Council child care sprint
Minnesota’s Department of Employment and Economic Development convenes the Minnesota Business Vitality Council to explore economic opportunities for Minnesota. Work groups complete six month project sprints on topics selected by the Council. The Council selected early care and education as a topic for a recent sprint; the work group’s final report highlights the challenges facing the early care and education field from an economic development perspective and offers recommendations.

Parent Aware Racial Equity Action Plan and equity engagement
The 2021 Minnesota Legislature directed the Department of Human Services (DHS) to identify barriers that prevent racially, ethnically, culturally, and geographically diverse child care programs/providers from pursuing a Parent Aware Rating, and solutions to overcome them. To accomplish that, this project reached out to and respectfully engaged child care providers and other key stakeholders, and reported results that DHS used for the Legislative Report due March 1, 2022.

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation in partnership with DHS supported the facilitation of an effort to create a Racial Equity Action Plan for Parent Aware. The project included many community partners in a year-long process that overlapped with the work of the Equity Engagement. The completion of this report marks the beginning, not the end, of the work to make Parent Aware a more racially equitable system for Minnesota’s children, families, and child care providers. Through this effort, DHS and its community partners and experts have the opportunity to make significant progress on racial equity goals and provide better and more comprehensive support for children, families, and communities that need it the most. The Parent Aware Racial Equity Action Plan represents a foundation and starting roadmap for carrying out this effort.

The plan and report can be found here.

Great Start for All Minnesota Children Task Force
The Great Start for All Minnesota Children Task Force was created by the Minnesota Legislature to develop a plan to ensure that “all families to have access to affordable, high-quality early care and education that enriches, nurtures, and supports children and their families." The task force must develop a plan and implementation timeline to achieve the following goals: 

• Creating a system in which family costs for early care and education are affordable; 
• Ensuring that a child’s access to high-quality early care and education is not determined by the child’s race, family income, or zip code; and 
• Ensuring that Minnesota’s early childhood educators are qualified, diverse, supported and equitably compensated regardless of setting. 

The Task Force’s final report and timeline are due to the Legislature by February 1, 2023. 

First Children’s Finance Early Care and Education Business Collaboratory 
The Early Care and Education Business Collaboratory is an innovative national collaboration to support state efforts to coordinate their local early care and education systems. The Collaboratory, launched in the fall of 2020, offers connections, ideas, innovations, and investment and implementation strategies for states working to strengthen their local systems. Over the course of three years, First Children’s Finance is convening 14 states, including Minnesota, to provide learning opportunities, investment, and technical support as these teams address local child care business issues, share best practices and ideas with their counterparts across the country, and implement effective, locally-tailored strategies for a sustainable early care and education system.