2024 Reports

Rural Child Care and Children in Disasters: Key Issues, Insights, and Recommendations

Hansen, Sean E.; Sury, Jonathan

Like healthy food, education, and stable housing, child care is an essential priority for millions of households in the United States. Children under the care of responsible adults demonstrate significant improvements in critical cognitive, linguistic, and social behaviors and other developmental benefits. About 12.6 million U.S. children receive non-parental child care services, including an estimated 776,300 low-income children under the age of six.

Child care services can include child care centers (referred to as center-based care) and home-based care, which includes a variety of providers that may include friends, family members, and neighbors (FFN care). Rural households rely heavily on FFN care and other forms of license-exempt child care, which closely coincide with rural values associated with kinship and close family ties. While some researchers have speculated that this preference is due to a scarcity of child care centers and higher costs in rural areas, others have found that there is a limited demand for child care centers in rural communities. In either case, home-based child care providers are essential to many low-income households, as well as those in which parents work nontraditional hours or where children have special needs.

The recommendations outlined in this report suggest potential avenues for response and recovery organizations and other community actors to help improve child care program access across rural America. In addition, they present several strategies for building resilience into existing child care providers in the face of climate-related disasters.