January 5, 2026 | Issue #1 | | Support of the Monday Morning Update | | For 2025 please consider a donation to help support delivery of the Monday Morning Update to your email every week by 5:30 am. Our distribution of this update is over 11,000 and growing. Your consideration is greatly appreciated. Thank you! | | |
The Thriving Families CA (TFC) Foundation is dedicated to strengthening families via connections to child care and other essential services that are critical to breaking the cycle of poverty and achieving economic self-sufficiency. Our community-based programs and services are located in each of California’s 58 counties and are uniquely positioned to address the complex and evolving needs of underserved and marginalized populations. Every day, our membership verifies and provides subsidies for tens of thousands of impoverished working families to access child care needed to support employment and a robust workforce, as well as comprehensive wraparound supports—including food security, stable housing, transportation, mental health services, domestic violence intervention, home visiting, health care access, legal assistance, and immigration support. Learn more about our network of 70+ public and private community-based organizations here.
For each month in 2025, an agency was profiled to showcase their work and services being delivered within their respective county and/ or community. Here are the unique Thriving Families CA Foundation Member Agencies profiled in 2025. Click on each of them to learn more!
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California’s Child Care System Is Being Held Hostage—and Families Will Pay the Price
Denyne M. Micheletti, CEO
Today as legislators return, they will be faced with California families, providers, and employers facing an unsettling reality: the federal government’s growing threat to disrupt child care funding collides head-on with a looming California budget shortfall. Together, these forces put the state’s fragile child care system at serious risk—one that could ripple across our economy, workforce, and the lives of millions of children.
Child care is not a side program. It is core economic infrastructure. When child care is stable, parents work, businesses function, and children thrive. When it is destabilized, the effects are immediate and severe. California knows this well. Even after historic investments in recent years, the state still struggles with provider shortages, long waitlists, and reimbursement rates that often fail to cover the true cost of care.
Now layer on the federal threat—whether through shutdowns, delays, or reductions in child care and early learning funding. For California, which serves well over a million children through federally supported programs and relies heavily on Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) dollars, the consequences would be profound. Federal instability does not simply pause funding; it injects uncertainty into contracts, payroll, and services that families depend on every single day.
At the same time, California is staring down a significant budget shortfall. When revenues tighten, even well-intentioned commitments come under pressure. Without federal stability, the state could be forced into impossible choices: backfilling federal losses, slowing expansion, freezing rates, or cutting access altogether. None of these options are abstract. They translate into fewer child care slots, provider closures, reduced hours, and parents—especially mothers—being pushed out of the workforce.
The burden will not fall evenly. Low-income families, families of color, rural communities, and children with disabilities will feel the impact first and hardest. Licensed family child care homes and centers —already operating on razor-thin margins—may not survive another shock. Once they close, they are extraordinarily difficult to replace.
This moment demands clarity and leadership. At the federal level, child care funding must be treated as essential, not discretionary. Threats to halt or delay funding undermine state systems and destabilize local economies far beyond Washington, D.C. At the state level, California must resist the temptation to view child care as an easy place to slow spending. Doing so would be fiscally shortsighted. Every dollar cut from child care costs the state many more in lost productivity, increased reliance on safety-net programs, and long-term harm to children’s outcomes.
California has long prided itself on leading the nation. Leadership now means saying plainly: child care cannot be the bargaining chip in federal budget fights, and it cannot be sacrificed in state budget balancing. Families need predictability. Providers need stability. Children need continuity.
January 5 should not mark the beginning of another year of uncertainty for child care. It should be the moment when policymakers—federal and state alike—recognize that protecting child care is not just a moral imperative, but an economic one. If we fail to act, California’s families will pay the price, and the state’s recovery and future prosperity will be weaker for it.
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The TFC Foundation has been in contact with the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) regarding the impact of the proposed freeze of federal child care to California. It has been shared that as of this writing and due to the process CDSS undertakes in pulling down its share of federal dollars, California appears to be okay until March 2026. CDSS is working diligently to stay on top of the ever changing federal challenges and is committed to sharing information as it becomes available.
Further, this week, January 10th is the deadline for Governor Newsom to release a January budget. Since that date is on a Saturday, the budget can be released on the preceding Friday (January 8) or electronically on January 10 with briefings held the next business day.
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Thank You to Our Generous 2024-25 Thriving Families CA Foundation Champions!
Thank you to the following Champions who stepped up in 2024-25, with funding to enhance our ability to serve the field. These agencies have made it possible for TFC to support our field with more tailored support of individual organizations, ability to pay for legal, advocacy and social media supports, enhanced regional trainings, improving data collection, and more.
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