From September 13 to 18, Home Grown celebrates its fourth annual Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FNN) Appreciation Week to honor those who care for the young children in their life.
This week, we join Home Grown in celebrating the 460 relative care providers who reside in Allegheny County. Relative providers include grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and siblings, and are a core pillar of Pennsylvania’s child care infrastructure.
Families often rely on these caregivers for child care during nontraditional hours, such as evenings and holidays, or because they share the same language, culture, values, and traditions. Relative care providers are vitally important because they give stability, intergenerational connection, and a nurturing learning environment to thousands of children across Pennsylvania.
Advocating for Relative Care Providers
For the past year, Trying Together has partnered with Home Grown and the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania on the Thriving Providers Project. This initiative is focused on strengthening the economic stability of home-based child care providers through direct cash payments and policy innovation. In Allegheny County, 19 caregivers are participating in this pilot project.
Through the project, relative child care providers have consistently identified economic insecurity, administrative barriers, and limited access to resources and supports as challenges to providing stable care.
The program’s mission is to support and stabilize caregivers and improve the availability and quality of child care for children and families- and there’s evidence that the support works.
Relative care providers participating in the program have shared the ways the direct cash payments have helped them, saying
- The direct payment helps with unforeseen circumstances
- Direct cash transfers have enabled providers to not worry about meals and utilities and be able to afford to stay home and provide care
- The payments help with purchasing diapers, wipes, and snacks
To learn more, see the Thriving Provider Project webpage and Home Grown’s FFN Appreciation Week page.
