Talking Points

If a Legislator/ Policy Influencer Publicly Supports…

A Talking Point in Favor of FFN Care is…

  • Rural Communities

  • Agricultural Workforce

Family, Friend, and Neighbor care is especially prevalent in the many rural areas of our state where there are often few, if any, licensed care centers close by.

Rural families often rely on home-based child care options to enable them to contribute to our workforce and provide financially for their families. It is an essential form of child care for our agricultural workforce for this reason.

  • Parents’ Bill of Rights

  • Individual Freedoms

  • Homeschooling 

We/I believe that it’s really important that all families are able to choose a form of child care that aligns with their individual values, which for many families often means having children educated in a home-based environment by a trusted provider.

  • Economic prosperity

  • Boosting the workforce

  • Self-sufficiency

  • Supporting the middle class

A broader selection of care options gives families more flexibility and freedom in how childcare can meet their working needs. The more families that have access to early child care that works for them, the more families that are able to participate in the workforce and provide for their families on their own.

  • Public education

  • Licensed-based care

Child care capacity in our state is currently very low and there aren’t nearly enough child care slots in licensed care centers to serve all of the families with children under 5 who need consistent child care in order to maintain employment and uphold the workforce.

Working class families are in immediate need of care that is accessible and affordable to them and that includes the many families who don’t have access currently to center-based care.

  • Working-class families 

  • Early childhood education organizations

Families need care that is accessible and affordable to them and one of the ways our organization is working to make that possible is by recognizing the many families and providers embedded in Family Friend and Neighbor home-based child care and making them eligible recipients of our resources and support. 

  • Increasing funding for education

  • Increasing wages of educators

We would like to see our representatives provide funding streams for highly utilized but unfunded care initiatives like Family, Friend, and Neighbor home-based care. Millions of children ages 0-5 in the U.S. are cared for by home-based child providers and yet in North Carolina Family, Friend, and Neighbor care providers do not currently have access to public funding streams. 

Increasing funding for early education would make it possible for legislators to both recognize and fund FFN care in our state while also appropriately funding center-based care, without pitting center-based and home-based care against one another.