How Child Care Aware of America Moves from Maps to Action

Parenting young children is a thrilling journey filled with milestones and big decisions—especially when it comes to childcare. For working parents across the United States, finding reliable childcare is a major challenge. The search can be overwhelming, with families facing limited options and a patchwork of policies that differ at the federal, state, and local levels. These overlapping regulations and varying resources make it difficult to understand where care is needed most and how to improve access.

That’s where the nonprofit Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA) steps in. Alex Cooper, the organization’s director of geographic information system (GIS) research, explains that CCAoA serves as “a hub for all things childcare” and is the only national organization that supports every part of the childcare system. Its mission is to advance a childcare system that effectively serves all children and families. CCAoA achieves this not only through location-based research and data collection, but also through partnerships with Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) organizations across the United States.

Because understanding where childcare providers are in relation to community demand is inherently location based, the organization uses GIS tools to map the childcare landscape. Web GIS mapping software like ArcGIS Online helps CCAoA staff visualize data on families, providers, and policies across all levels of government. Staff share this data with leaders and policymakers to identify gaps; allocate resources; and improve access to quality, affordable childcare in every community. This actionable information gives busy working parents quick and easy access to available childcare options, especially when time constraints make searching on their own difficult.

Childcare services in the United States are managed by many different agencies, both nationally and within each state. This complexity can make it a struggle to stay in the know about important updates and changes. By using a location-based perspective, CCAoA provides researchers, parents, and stakeholders with actionable data to improve childcare access.

To deliver these insights, CCAoA leverages ArcGIS Dashboards—an interactive, web-based data visualization tool. With ArcGIS Dashboards, communities can give policymakers real-time location-based analytics that highlight existing gaps between families in need and available childcare providers. This helps policymakers see where improvements are needed to strengthen their local childcare systems.

For Cooper, childcare is not just about policy—it’s also deeply personal and about compassion.

“A lot of my friends and colleagues are starting to have families, and I’ll tell them about the work we do to support CCR&Rs and how they can help them find childcare while they’re trying to work,” said Cooper. “A lot of people don’t know about the no-cost referral services CCR&Rs provide, so we’re always trying to raise awareness. Working parents are a very tired constituency who often lack the time and energy to advocate for the better services they need.”

CCR&Rs rely on accurate data and insights in order to offer quality referral services and consumer education. Because childcare availability is constantly changing, CCAoA empowers CCR&Rs and other early-learning advocates by delivering timely information to those who need it most.

One example is the project Child Care Access in West Virginia: Mapping the Gap. Using ArcGIS Dashboards, this initiative visualizes both the potential demand (families in need of childcare) and supply (nearby providers). These visualizations help advocates and state policymakers identify local resources and gaps in access—without the need to undergo time-consuming research.

With this dashboard, users can filter data through the list of counties of West Virginia and better understand how many providers are available within a county, each area’s licensed capacity, and the type of care available—including in-home family childcare, childcare centers, school-age childcare programs, and Head Start programs. The interactive map presents the data in a clear, user-friendly way, making it easy to explore the information.

The dashboard also highlights unmet needs by providing a supply-and-demand metric. This metric tracks how many children under age six may need childcare but have no providers with available capacity nearby. Policymakers use the metric to gauge where to focus attention and resources. Advocates and researchers can use the dashboard to inform discussions with policymakers and support legislative recommendations.

Childcare regulations in the United States differ considerably from state to state, creating a fragmented system that can be cryptic and confusing for parents to navigate. This proved exasperating in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, when CCAoA’s policy analysts manually tracked state administrative and legislative changes in a spreadsheet to stay current with new developments.

Recognizing an opportunity to improve the process, Cooper visualized these state policies on a dashboard and created an automated GIS workflow. Now, the policy team continues to enter data into the same spreadsheet, but the information is automatically joined to a spatial layer and visualized in a dashboard created using ArcGIS Online. The dashboard displays state funding, legislative highlights, and other state-specific policy information in one easily navigable platform.

By organizing childcare policies in this way, CCAoA enables national and state partners as well as policymakers to quickly see how different states are moving toward more accessible and affordable childcare systems.

These two initiatives are examples of how CCAoA uses ArcGIS to boost awareness about childcare service resources, investments, and policies being implemented at the state and local levels. CCAoA’s full library of ArcGIS software-based mapping projects showcases even more ways spatial data supports early learning and childcare improvement. By housing, organizing, and mapping spatial data, CCAoA transforms geographical insights into action. This work helps families find quality, affordable childcare and provides policymakers with meaningful statistics to drive service improvements.