Colorado’s child care conversation is shifting from being narrowly viewed as a family issue to being discussed as an economic, workforce, and community infrastructure issue. Across Colorado, policymakers, business leaders, journalists, service providers, and parents are increasingly framing child care as essential to the state’s economic health and workforce stability.
As a means of facilitating and developing these grassroots stories, Gary Community Ventures and other philanthropies including the Buell Foundation have provided grant funding to a diverse group of researchers, writers, newsrooms, artists, content creators, and communicators to raise awareness about the challenges facing Colorado’s child care system.
Dubbed Child Care Works Colorado, the movement describes itself as nonpartisan, community-centered, and focused on raising awareness about Colorado’s child care crisis and building support for solutions.
The new website curates these compelling and varied stories into an accessible format and overview of all the narrative work that’s underway.
Major Themes Emerging in Colorado Media
- Child Care Costs Have Reached a Breaking Point
Recent reporting from The Colorado Sun, The Denver Post, Chalkbeat, Colorado Public Radio (CPR), KUNC, CBS Colorado, and others consistently finds that child care costs consume a significant share of household income. In some Colorado counties, annual child care costs equal more than half a week’s wages every month for minimum-wage workers. Parents frequently report paying $20,000 or more annually per child.
Media coverage is increasingly treating child care affordability as part of Colorado’s broader cost-of-living crisis alongside housing, health care, and transportation.
- The “Impossible Business Model”
A recurring theme is that families cannot afford care, yet providers also struggle financially.
News stories and community discussions describe a system where:
- Parents face extremely high tuition
- Early childhood educators often earn low wages
- Child care businesses operate on thin margins
- Centers struggle to recruit and retain staff
This has become one of the central narratives in Colorado reporting: everyone involved feels financially squeezed.
- Child Care is a Workforce and Economic Issue
Many recent stories focus on how child care shortages affect employers and labor force participation. Business leaders increasingly experience the realities of parents being forced to reduce work hours or leave jobs when care is unavailable; employee recruitment and retention suffers; and local economies lose productivity when families cannot access care. This framing has broadened support beyond traditional early childhood advocates.
- The Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) Crisis
One of the most significant storylines has been the freeze affecting Colorado’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which helps low-income families pay for care. Coverage has documented cases where families are unable to enroll, child care businesses are losing revenue, and there are concerns that prolonged funding disruptions could worsen shortages and force some centers to close. These issues have become a focal point for advocates who argue that public investment is necessary to stabilize the system.
- Storytelling as Advocacy
An emerging trend is the use of grassroots storytelling projects to humanize the issue.
CBS Colorado recently highlighted efforts by the Chamber of Mothers and other organizations to collect and share stories from parents, caregivers, and employers about affordability, accessibility, and long waitlists. The goal is to shift child care from a niche policy discussion into a widely understood public concern that affects all of us as Coloradans.
Visit the Child Care Works Colorado website for all the stories.