Families have to navigate a complicated maze to find childcare that suits their needs. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated parents’ efforts to provide safe and affordable care and pushed women off the workforce. While this presents a challenge for families across the city, information barriers to access to care disproportionately affect color communities. To make this problem even more difficult, Latino families in particular live in what are considered to be “childcare deserts” with inadequate childcare. You will also encounter obstacles to enrollment.

Our research team recently had the opportunity to learn about this issue directly from Latina mothers. A mother from Little Village told us that she had never seen a daycare center in her neighborhood. Another said, “Everyone here says, ‘Oh, my kids didn’t go to the ledge’ because there is nothing around.” The limited availability of childcare in Latin American communities, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, is driving mothers off the job and their families into poverty.

Not only is there limited formal childcare available in the Latino communities, but families also lack information about existing programs. Child carers have no uniform eligibility requirements, waiting list protocols, locations, schedules, costs, curricula, languages, class sizes, safety guidelines, and supports, making it more difficult for parents to understand their options. Even within individual programs, admission requirements and costs are made more difficult by interwoven funding flows.

The purpose of the work and income eligibility requirements is to give priority to the most needy families. However, the complexity of these requirements can counteract these good intentions. It can be difficult for families to obtain and understand information about program costs and eligibility, especially for families with language barriers and the very different working hours common in Latino communities. The lack of information pushes mothers out of the labor market even more as families may be discouraged from seeking care if they are unsure whether they can qualify or afford it. For example, some mothers in two-parent households told us they needed to cut their hours or leave the labor market in order to qualify for affordable care.

The current childcare search system can also feel transactional, making it difficult for families to trust providers enough to complete registration. It takes time and resources to build trust so that families are comfortable asking questions about sensitive issues such as immigration status, work status, income, and the specific needs of their children. This trust is crucial for families who are comfortable leaving their children in someone else’s care.

To remove these barriers, it is important that policymakers, government agencies, childcare workers, lawyers, community level organizations, schools and other key stakeholders work together now to promote equitable access to childcare. As suggested by a mother in Belmont Cragin, there should be a place where families can get information about childcare in the community, “where to put up posters, where to tell, where to say you can come in, that they can can help you with something like this here. “

Community-based childcare specialists in every Chicago community could provide streamlined, knowledgeable, and personalized support to provide families with the care that best suits their individual needs. This support should be neighborhood based to suit the specific arrangements, assets, needs and culture of each community.

Because trust is such an important factor in family decision-making, existing relationships with clinics, churches, schools, and community-level organizations should be used to build that trust. Individuals providing this support should have a deep and unbiased understanding of the characteristics and eligibility requirements of local childcare regulations and pre-K programs, including those offered by community centers, Chicago public schools, home providers, and private programs .

Providing coordinated support in each community to balance families with childcare could also help communities identify the barriers and gaps in care that are preventing families from receiving care. This information could be used to organize families with similar needs and advocate for solutions that remove common barriers.

The city’s recent commitment to promoting justice and the system changes brought about by COVID-19 provide an important window of opportunity for resource allocation and use to better support Chicago communities in aligning families with childcare providers who meet their needs best meet, both during the pandemic and beyond.

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