Something is brewing in the world of child care technology. It’s happening slowly, behind the scenes, and unless you’re directly affected, it’s not especially noticeable. But it will be soon, and the ramifications for the already unstable and underwater early care and education sector aren't going to be pleasant. 

What is it? The rise of “child care marketplaces,” a growing software segment that has received an influx of tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funding in recent years. At a high level, these marketplaces are online portals designed to help families find and connect with child care providers directly. Some of these platforms make their money on a subscription basis (e.g. we won’t connect you with care unless you pay for our premium service). Others take their money off the top of any facilitated “bookings” between families and providers. Some contract directly with large employers to offer the marketplace as an “employee benefit.” Still others charge nothing, instead using the marketplace as a way to intercept search traffic and boost the profiles of the products they do sell. 

That all sounds neat. We know how desperately families need care and how hard it can be to find the perfect fit for their schedule, their child’s needs, their transportation limitations, and countless other variables related to access, affordability, quality, and alignment. In fact, this doesn’t sound like an unpleasant problem at all. It’s only when you consider the big picture of the publicly funded early care and education ecosystem that the alarm bells start to go off.

Who's Harmed by Fragmented Child Care Search?

1) Child Care Resource & Referral Organizations

The critical role of CCR&Rs has been highlighted in this blog before. These community-based organizations, funded in most states by the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant, have been supporting families and care providers for six decades. Their reach is nearly absolute—there are very few parts of the country that aren’t served in some way by a CCR&R. Based on how interwoven they are with the system as a whole, and the fact that they provide their services to families for free, we’re considering them public infrastructure for the purpose of this discussion. But what do they have to do with these venture-backed marketplaces? 

If I search online for child care in my area and the top results are these for-profit marketplaces, I might never even realize that public infrastructure exists. If a large employer signs a contract and promotes the use of one of these systems as an employee benefit, that’s even more opportunity taken away from the CCR&R. As a parent looking for care, I don’t know I have any other options. I don’t know any of the nuances. I’m always going to use the first and easiest tool available to me. 

That slow whittling away of impact has far-reaching implications. As outlined in Child Care Aware of America’s Child Care Resource and Referral Position Statement, CCR&Rs “are uniquely positioned to turn a patchwork of local and state resources into a system that helps families work, supports children’s healthy development and learning, and keeps our economy growing.” 

The professionals who make up our public infrastructure today are deeply embedded in the early care and education system on a level that can’t be imitated without years of boots-on-the-ground experience. They know their providers because they have helped them get licensed, they’ve trained and coached their workforce, and they’ve supported their quality and accreditation efforts. They’ve heard all the feedback from parents and can readily identify which programs make sense for which families. They care deeply about helping families and children for the right reasons, not because they want to sell software. They also routinely partner with other community organizations to innovate, build, and strengthen both their child care systems and local economic development efforts. 

CCR&Rs  are already perpetually underfunded and under-resourced. They simply cannot compete with profit-driven corporations. And if they lose their hold on the “referral” half of “resource and referral,” they will be hard-pressed to continue delivering the holistic impact the entire sector relies on. CCR&Rs should always be the source of truth for child care in their communities, but they do need to be empowered with modern technology if they want to keep their edge. More on that later.  

2) Child Care Providers

Child care providers are an overworked, under-appreciated population that frankly doesn’t have time to add one more thing to their plates. When it comes to child care search portals, provider engagement is essential for the purpose of keeping openings, enrollment, staffing, hours, programs, and services up to date. Providers also need to put effort into marketing and differentiating their program for families that are comparing their options. 

It’s hard enough for providers to do this when their information only needs to be updated in one place. Once you start adding additional marketplaces to the mix, the required level of effort increases rapidly. Some of these marketplaces even require providers to go through a vetting process before they’ll throw their proprietary (arbitrary?) stamp of approval on that provider’s profile. Now, as a provider, I not only have to dedicate myself to a rigorous licensing and quality process through the state, I also have to take time out of my day to meet whatever other criteria these for-profit companies are looking for, or risk putting myself at a competitive disadvantage. 

Now consider any potential messages providers are receiving from parents that require them to log in to one platform or another. Tour requests, waitlist management, and staffing or profile updates are all more examples of recurring events that require providers’ time and attention. It’s redundant data entry to the max, which too often ends in providers stretching themselves even thinner than they already are or giving up on updates altogether.

This kind of redundant data entry, misaligned standards, and disparate sources of truth for families is not just bad for providers, it also causes confusion for families who often don’t have any frame of reference for quality standards or accreditation, which brings us to... 

3) Families Searching for Care

As mentioned above, families don’t have the context to know when there might be other options available to them. This is especially harmful and egregious in the context of pay-to-play subscription models, for which many parents are likely to assume that paying the fee is the only way to find the care they’re looking for because the free alternatives are harder to find. This is a serious equity issue. Families are already struggling to afford care, and now not only are they paying for something that should be free, they’re also not being exposed to the information they need about financial assistance programs and other services that go hand in hand with child care.

And what of the conflict between quality and “certification” in the context of these marketplaces? As mentioned in the provider section, each software company has its own way of labeling providers as “vetted” or “approved,” none of which align with the actual quality rating systems of their respective states. Let’s call that what it is—straight misinformation. Parents, most of whom have no way of knowing any better, are likely to assume that such a stamp of approval means a given child care center is something other than what it actually is. 

Where CCR&Rs and state systems provide transparent definitions of what various quality ratings mean, the private marketplaces are almost entirely subjective and built around which providers choose to engage with the software company. This opens the door for all kinds of selection bias while muddying the waters around what makes for high-quality child care. 

There is, of course, something to be said about the human element as well. While a self-service child care search is convenient, it’s not the ideal fit for everyone.  Some venture-backed marketplaces do provide staffing to field calls from families, but these representatives would be hard-pressed to match the experience, expertise, and relationships that their public counterparts have at their disposal. 

4) Data Governance and Reliability

Accurate supply and demand information has been the white whale of early childhood for decades. This is a complex topic worthy of its own article (or 10) in future months, but suffice to say that most states are still relying on severely outdated methods of data collection to identify where they should allocate funding and where gaps exist in the current systems.  In a world where we so rarely have a clear picture of where people are looking for care, what ages are under-supported, where new providers should launch their business for maximum reach, and what the best next steps are for eliminating our (many) child care deserts, reliable data matters now more than ever. 

Fragmented child care search results in that data being spread out across multiple competing systems that have no reason to talk to each other. The output is a relatively useless cross-section of demand that fails to tell the whole story. The ongoing need for data-driven decision making is apparent to everyone who has been involved in child care policy, but if the data doesn’t exist, there’s simply no path to get there. Reporting is so crucial for agencies in terms of demonstrating impact, making the case for funding, and demonstrating accountability for public investment, but the reports in question are reliant on all the data being in one place. Otherwise it’s just guesswork. 

And, speaking of data, who owns it? When child care search is centralized at the state level, that data is overseen by a highly regulated state agency held to the highest standards of privacy and security. When it’s localized and provided through the CCR&R, it’s owned by the CCR&R, which often receives both state and federal funding and must adhere to those respective rules and regulations to keep its contracts. When it’s delivered through a private software company? That software company owns the data, opening up a Pandora’s box of potential abuse through targeted advertising, marketing campaigns, exploitation of families in need, and more. 

When those companies sell their subscriptions directly to families or contract with employers, they enjoy little to no oversight with regards to privacy protections. We’ve all seen what happens when for-profit software companies are allowed to operate on the honor system. It inevitably leads to a lose-lose scenario for everyone else. 

What Can We Do About It?

The first thing we need to do in the fight to keep public infrastructure relevant is acknowledge that the demand for these private marketplaces wouldn’t exist if families felt like they were being adequately served by the status quo. We’re not doing a good enough job of making people aware of the options available to them, and too many of those options consist of cumbersome legacy systems that aren’t easily accessible for families or aligned with the expectations of a modern web-based experience. 

The next step in combatting fragmented systems is to defragment them by giving parents a one-stop shop for child care search, consumer information, and assistance programs. This is most effectively done at the state level, an approach that promotes consistency and transparency regardless of where families are located. Iowa’s Child Care Connect site has been much lauded as a model for next-generation systems thinking. South Dakota uses BridgeCare to do this via their Helpline Center. Connecticut just legislated this approach with a bill to stand up a centralized Early Care and Education Program Portal, designed to “untangle what families and advocates have long described as a confusing system.” 

Sweeping modernization of the ECE sector is long overdue. We challenge policymakers, agencies, and leaders to prioritize the transition from convoluted, hard-to-maintain legacy infrastructure to a more streamlined approach in the interest of efficiency, accessibility, and sustainability. Some of these startup companies have great ideas that our current models can’t accommodate, from booking care by the hour or day to integrating summer camps and other alternatives into the search portal. There is real innovation here that we should be tapping into to improve the public sector experience. 

But none of that can happen without strong leadership and the funding to back it up. The alternative is a world in which where you live, who you work for, and how much you can afford to pay end up dictating whether or not you can find the care and resources you need. We can and must do better than that.