By Kim Addie
As a proud parent—and a former Sheltering Arms kid myself—you couldn’t have told me that one day, I’d be thinking about the sophistication of payer mix in center-based care or interrogating whether cooperative models are feasible as one pathway toward sustainability and shared ownership in child care.
Back then, I was trying to figure out two very real things:
Should I find care near my job or near my home—because what happens when my baby gets sick and I need to leave work?
And how much of my limited income could I actually afford?
Most parents aren’t focused on staff earnings or the long-term sustainability of a childcare center. They’re looking for warm smiles at drop-off, clear feeding and nap schedules, and maybe a camera in the classroom to be able to check on their little ones throughout the day. I was no different. As a young mama with three children, juggling after-school care, pickups, and preschool, I just wanted a place that cared for my babies as much as I did.
Today, I understand that what parents don’t always see—educator pay, staffing stability, and whether a center is built to survive and thrive—is inseparable from quality, consistency, and outcomes for children.
In my role at Kindred, I lead a body of work deeply informed by our Lead team’s research and policy recommendations—while also intentionally building evidence for what it takes to achieve different results. That work depends on enabling conditions: partner capacity, access to resources and capital, and—critically—policy environments that either allow models to grow or quietly constrain them.
This is especially true in the South.
We spend a lot of time interrogating what doesn’t work or what actively impedes progress. We ask questions like: What makes a model viable in Georgia versus Pennsylvania? What policy scaffolding is required for collective ownership models to have a real chance at building wealth rather than being doomed from the start?
Why Pennsylvania?
Our decision to reference Pennsylvania is not incidental. In Q4 of last year, we highlighted Childspace, a cooperative childcare model based in Pennsylvania, as part of our broader exploration of shared ownership approaches in the care economy. Childspace has often been lifted up as a practitioner-led example of cooperative governance, educator voice, and quality outcomes in early childhood education.
What Childspace offers is not a simple blueprint to replicate—but rather a lens. Its longevity raises an important question: what conditions make it possible for a cooperative child care model to sustain itself over time? That question inevitably leads us beyond organizational design and into policy and financing context.
Child Care Subsidy Generosity & Structure: Georgia vs. Pennsylvania
One of the clearest differences between Georgia and Pennsylvania shows up in child care subsidy structure and adequacy.
In Georgia, Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) reimbursement rates consistently fall below the true cost of care and the federally recommended benchmark for market rates. Only about 22% of children under age 15 in Georgia who may require paid child care are actually in paid care, reflecting deep affordability and access gaps for families.¹² At the same time, the average annual wage for child care workers is approximately $27,760, reinforcing chronic workforce instability and high turnover in a sector essential to the broader economy.³
Providers in Georgia are left to survive by shifting payer mix, cross-subsidizing where they can, and absorbing financial risk personally—particularly in home-based settings and small centers.
By contrast, Pennsylvania has made different structural choices. The state has invested in higher base child care subsidy reimbursement rates, tiered quality add-ons through the Keystone STARS system, and more predictable public funding streams that reduce volatility for providers.⁴ These choices do not solve child care—but they do create greater stability, which matters deeply for any model that relies on shared governance, collective decision-making, and long-term planning.
And to be clear:
I’m not arguing that Pennsylvania has solved child care; I’m saying it has made different policy choices that give providers more stability and more room to experiment with ownership and sustainability.
Public Investment: What It Signals
Public investment isn’t just about dollars—it’s about what a state signals it values.
Georgia has maintained historically high state budget reserves, even as child care subsidy rates lag behind cost, workforce wages remain near poverty levels, and providers struggle to keep their doors open.⁵ This sends a clear message: child care is perceived as a private family problem rather than essential economic infrastructure.
Pennsylvania’s approach, while still imperfect, signals something different. By allocating state dollars to stabilize providers and leverage federal investments, the state has acknowledged that child care is foundational to workforce participation and economic resilience.⁶
These signals shape outcomes. They determine whether providers can plan beyond survival, whether educators can remain in the field, and whether ownership models—particularly cooperative ones—have the operating margin required to function.
Cooperative Models: Promise and Limits
This reality was front and center during a care economy convening we hosted late last year, where we intentionally lifted up cooperative models as one potential pathway toward shared ownership and collective wealth-building in child care.
To be clear, cooperative models are not a silver bullet. We are still actively examining their efficacy within the child care sector—particularly when tested against existing financial models and deeply uneven policy environments. Our inquiry is focused on understanding when cooperative ownership can enhance stability and wealth-building, where it is constrained by subsidy structures, capital access, and operating margins, and what policy conditions are required for these models to function as intended.
This framing is especially important in Georgia, where women of color—particularly Black women—are the child care system. Nationally, women of color make up roughly 50% of home-based providers, and in Georgia, Black women represent approximately 33% of all child care providers.⁷⁸ Yet, the current system systematically undervalues their labor while limiting pathways to asset-building and ownership.
As scholar Jessica Gordon Nembhard has long articulated, cooperative ownership holds potential to generate individual, collective, and community wealth but only when enterprises operate within enabling policy and financial environments that support capitalization, revenue stability, and long-term viability.⁹ A cooperative model that might stabilize and grow in a state like Pennsylvania can be structurally constrained in Georgia—not because the model is flawed, but because the surrounding policy environment does not allow it to breathe.
A Personal Closing
As a mom, my vantage point has changed. I see parents making impossible tradeoffs like late rent, fewer health care options, and limited choices because of policy decisions far removed from their daily lives. I also see places like Sheltering Arms worrying about payroll, staffing ratios, and payer mix just to keep their doors open.
And this work is personal.
My son had an incredible foundation. He’s now a Posse Fellow, with a double major in Music and Economics and a master’s in Economic Theory and Policy. We have some dope conversations about the economy. I owe that, in no small part, to places like Sheltering Arms and to educators like Mr. Tony, one of the few Black male teachers my son had.
The care economy isn’t just about care. It’s about dignity. It’s about ownership.
And it’s about whether our policy choices allow those who do this essential work to build wealth or simply survive.
Footnotes
- Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI). Child Care Assistance in Georgia: Limited Access and Low Provider Reimbursement Rates.
- Conference Board Committee for Economic Development (CED). Child Care in the United States: 2019–2023 Analysis.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Childcare Workers, 2023.
- Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL). Child Care Works Subsidy Program Policies and Rates.
- Georgia Budget and Policy Institute (GBPI). Georgia’s Revenue Shortfall Reserve and Child Care Funding Analysis.
- U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Economics of Child Care Supply and Public Investment.
- Economic Policy Institute. Who’s Caring for Our Children? Child Care Workforce Characteristics.
- IPUMS CPS, University of Minnesota. Child Care Workforce Data.
- Gordon Nembhard, Jessica. Asset Building Through Cooperative Business Ownership: Defining and Measuring Cooperative Economic Wealth. University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, 2008.
*Out of the Lab is Kindred Futures’ practice-facing arm—where theory meets the field. Drawing from our work we share real-time insights from what we’re testing, learning, and adjusting in motion. Starting with the care economy, we intend to surface what’s actually happening on the ground—what’s working, where they are real challenges to the work, and what it will take to build systems that get us to sustainable impact.