Last night, we held our first UDW family child care providers meeting. Attendees were able to join the meeting by phone and in person at our UDW office in Sacramento.

During the meeting, we learned more about UDW and the work we are doing to unite providers in order to win improvements for us and our families.

We also discussed the new law that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Family child care providers were left out and will not receive a raise under the new law, but we will be required, as small business owners, to pay our daycare assistants the increased wage.

In order to ensure the minimum wage increase has a positive impact on family child care providers, we are uniting together to support the California Legislative Women’s Caucus budget proposal, which would invest $800 million into child care this year.

The proposal would increase license exempt rates, the Regional Market Rate, and the Standard Reimbursement Rate. It would also help stabilize and grow the amount of children in our home based daycares by adding 25,000 child care slots, raising the income ceiling so that more parents qualify, and guaranteeing parents 12 months of subsidy eligibility.

Let’s win improvements for family child care providers by ensuring this proposal makes it into this year’s budget!

Call your legislator, and tell them to stand with California’s children, working families, and family child care providers by supporting the Women’s Caucus proposal to invest $800 million in child care and early education.

You can find your legislators here. Once you enter your address and find out who your legislators are, click on her/his name to find their phone number.

Read more about our other legislative priorities here.

And mark your calendar! Our next UDW Family Child Care Providers meeting is Thursday, May 19^th at 7pm. Look out for more details in the future.