October 26, 2026 | Issue #41 | | Support of the Monday Morning Update | | For 2026 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 12,000 and growing. Your consideration is greatly appreciated. Thank you! | |
Being Bold Means Being Willing to Imagine Something Different
by Denyne Micheletti, CEO
Over the past several weeks, I have written about the importance of being willing to kill our own ideas, having difficult conversations, and recognizing that listening must lead to something meaningful. At our recent joint conference, I was encouraged by the energy, fresh perspectives, and willingness of so many to challenge how we have always done things.
But I want to push that conversation a little further.
What if being bold means questioning not just how we improve California's child care system, but how we fundamentally think about it?
I recently came across an article from Project 2029 titled Child Care Choice Guarantee, which explores a fundamentally different approach to supporting families.
The proposal raises an interesting question: What if every family had access to publicly funded child care or financial support to make the caregiving arrangement that works best for them possible?
The concept recognizes something our field has understood for decades: Families are not all the same, and neither are their child care needs.
Some families need full-time care. Others need evenings, weekends, or overnight care. Some prefer a child care center, others a family child care home, and still others rely on relatives or trusted caregivers. Some parents would prefer to care for their own children during their earliest years but simply cannot afford to do so.
The proposal includes access to publicly funded child care across a variety of settings, financial support for families choosing other caregiving arrangements, investments in child care supply, and recognition of the importance of compensating the workforce.
There are certainly questions to explore about cost, implementation, equity, accountability, and how such an approach would interact with existing programs. But that is precisely why these ideas deserve conversation.
We do not have to agree with every element of a proposal to recognize that it challenges us to think differently.
California has spent decades building an extensive network of community-based programs, Alternative Payment Programs, Resource and Referral agencies, family child care providers, centers, and other early learning partners.
We have tremendous expertise and infrastructure already in place.
Yet we continue to operate within a system of separate funding streams, different eligibility requirements, administrative complexities, and program structures that too often require families and providers to adapt to the system rather than the system adapting to them.
We spend considerable time discussing how to make these structures work better. Those conversations matter. But perhaps we also need to ask whether we are spending too much time preserving structures that no longer reflect what families need.
What would it look like if we started with a few fundamental principles?
- Families should have meaningful choices about who cares for their children.
- Public investments should support families across the diverse settings and schedules in which care is provided.
- Providers should have the resources and stability necessary to deliver quality care.
- Accessing child care assistance should be simple, coordinated, and responsive.
- Existing community-based infrastructure should be strengthened, resourced and leveraged rather than unnecessarily duplicated.
Imagine what California could accomplish if we organized our systems around those principles.
Imagine if our No Wrong Door approach became a reality for every family. Imagine if we invested in the infrastructure needed to support true parental choice, including nontraditional-hour care, family child care, and underserved communities. Imagine if we simplified eligibility, aligned administrative requirements, and redirected resources currently consumed by unnecessary complexity toward serving more families.
And imagine if we were willing to consider ideas that do not fit neatly within our existing program definitions.
This is not a suggestion that we abandon what we have built. Quite the opposite. California's community-based infrastructure provides a strong foundation upon which to build something more responsive, more efficient, and more accessible.
Nor does being bold mean ignoring fiscal realities or the importance of protecting families and providers who depend on existing programs. Any meaningful transformation must be thoughtful, financially sustainable, and grounded in the experience of those delivering and receiving services.
But fiscal challenges should not become an excuse to stop imagining what is possible.
As we begin shaping our priorities for 2027 and beyond, I hope we will give ourselves permission to think beyond the next budget cycle, the next regulatory change, or the next legislative fix.
What should California's child care system look like ten years from now? What would we build if we were starting with the needs of families rather than the limitations of existing programs? And which of our long-held assumptions might we need to reconsider to get there?
I do not pretend to have all the answers. In fact, I believe our best ideas will come from bringing together people with different perspectives, experiences, and approaches.
But I do know this: Being bold is not simply asking for more funding to do what we have always done. Sometimes it means being willing to rethink what we do, how we do it, and why.
We have spent years working to improve the system we inherited.
Perhaps it is time to give ourselves permission to imagine the system we actually want.
And then have the courage to begin building it.
| |
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.
| | | | |
