Addressing the Decreasing Number of Family Child Care Providers in the United States

Action is needed to ensure that family child care remains a strong, healthy component of the early childhood education system. This brief examines the reasons family child care homes close and offers information that your state, territory, or tribe can use to solve this problem.

The paper was revised in March 2020 to include final data about the number of licensed child care facilities and licensed capacity from the 2017 Child Care Licensing Study .