Stronger child care. Stronger communities.
Supporting child care professionals. Strengthening programs. Connecting communities and families.
Child care is essential infrastructure for a healthy workforce and thriving community. Through Rise Forward, Child Care Answers is strengthening central Indiana’s early care and education system by supporting child care professionals, strengthening programs, and connecting partners around shared solutions.
What is Rise Forward?
Rise Forward is CCA’s next chapter of strategic growth and community impact. The four main pillars of our plan will help us better focus on our new mission of championing central Indiana’s early care and education ecosystem by equipping child care professionals with shared knowledge, coordinated supports, and strategic partnerships to strengthen care for children, families, the community and its workforce. Watch the video below to learn more!
Why it matters to employers
Each year, businesses now lose an average of $1,970 per working parent per year in management burden and lost productivity, due to child care challenges.
Ready Nation Report
Why it matters to Indiana's communities
Indiana's economy loses $4.22 billion dollars each year due to the ripple effects of the lack of child care.
U.S. Chamber Report
Why it matters to families
In Ready Nation's recent survey of working parents, nearly all (90 percent) of the parents reported that child care availability is a challenge in some way. Almost half said it is a significant struggle to find child care that is affordable and 40 percent reported problems finding high-quality care.
Ready Nation Report
Why it matters to children
Children who experienced high-quality caregiving (sensitive, responsive, cognitively stimulating) in their first five years of early care and education showed improved science, technology, education, and math (STEM) achievement and school performance through age 15 — and the effect was strongest for children from low-income families, helping close the income-based achievement gap in STEM specifically.
UC Irvine Study
Why it matters to child care professionals
Indiana is home to approximately 33,500 child care professionals working with children age birth through five. On average, they earn just $23,837 per year (below the poverty line); almost a quarter rely on public benefit to make ends meet. Through COVID and child care voucher (CCDF) cuts, these professionals continue to overcome barriers to ensure the best for the children they serve.
Indiana AEYC Fact Sheet
Impact areas
What your investment helps make possible
Support for child care professionals
Training, resources, guidance, and shared supports that help professionals grow and succeed
Stronger child care programs
Tools and partnerships that support quality, sustainability, and long-term program health
Deeper community connections
Collaboration that helps partners turn shared concern into shared solutions
Guidance for employers
Connecting employers into the broader child care conversation and workforce needs
Why Child Care Answers?
CCA is uniquely positioned in central Indiana with over 40 years as a trusted connector of child care professionals, community partners, employers, and families. Generous partners United Way of Central Indiana and Glick Philanthropies believed in us enough to fund innovative solutions through the Central Indiana Child Care Alliance and Strengthen Indy Child Care grant. Our staff is embedded in the central Indiana counties with an ear to the ground of the unique needs of each community, thanks to generous funding from the Hendricks County Community Foundation, Community Foundation of Boone County, Blue River Community Foundation, and Hamilton County Community Foundation.
Our Expertise
How you can support Rise Forward
Help central Indiana forward by investing in stronger child care professionals, stronger programs, and stronger communities.
Invest in Rise Forward
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Support stronger child care
