FedEx’s Post

🌟 Partner Spotlight: Partners In Promise🌟 At The Operation Child Care Project, we're honored to collaborate with organizations that share our commitment to supporting military families. Today, we want to shine a spotlight on our valued partner, Partners In Promise. Partners In Promise is dedicated to safeguarding the educational rights of military children in special education and disability communities, including those with unique and diverse backgrounds and needs, as they strive for equal access to quality education. Using data-driven solutions, Partners in Promise educates parents, enlightens leaders, and empowers military students for success. Why does childcare access for military-affiliated families matter to Partners In Promise? "All children deserve access to a childcare setting that is safe and enriching to support their unique medical or educational needs, including our military families enrolled in the Exceptional Family Member Program. Child care helps develop foundational skills for all children and sets the stage for their future success in education. When children are supported, it positively impacts military recruitment, readiness, and retention." Join us in expressing our gratitude for their invaluable partnership. Together, we're making a real difference in the lives of military families. 💙🤝

As a parent and a grandparent, I know directly how much childcare is critically important. More than half of families in this country live in childcare deserts. Furthermore, roughly 3.2 million children will likely lose childcare spots resulting from the end of pandemic relief federal funds for childcare, which expired September 30, 2023. Families can navigate a district with elementary, middle, and high schools. But early childcare education doesn’t have the same infrastructure. We have been overlooking a national program for childcare that could solve this issue — the childcare system for military families. This model could serve as a valuable blueprint for establishing a more comprehensive and accessible childcare infrastructure for all American families. Fixing Child Care: What We Can Learn From the Military – The 74 (the74million.org)

In case you missed it, we had an amazing new episode of Our Navy Life air this week! Episode Highlights: Supporting our service members means supporting their families. Safe, reliable, and affordable childcare is a critical issue that directly impacts military readiness and retention. In this episode: Guest Christin Anderson shares her heartbreaking story of how an urgent need for childcare ended in tragedy when her son suffered a traumatic brain injury at the hands of an abusive caregiver. Kayla Corbitt, founder of Operation Child Care Project (OCCP), discusses how OCCP is working to ensure military families have the resources they need to safely meet their childcare needs. Key Takeaways: Finding reputable, affordable childcare is crucial for military families. Lack of childcare directly affects military spouse employment, mental health, and overall military readiness. There is often a disconnect between traditional childcare options and the unique needs of military families. Operation Child Care Project offers personalized case management to help military families access all available resources for their specific childcare needs. Tune in to learn more about this vital topic and how we can better support our military families.  #OurNavyLife #ChildcareSupport #MilitaryFamilies #OCCP Listen to the episode: https://lnkd.in/eefn63DF

As of September 30, the critical $24 billion in child care stabilization funding from the American Rescue Plan has expired. We’re asking Congress to support President Biden’s supplemental budget request of $16 billion in funding to offer quality programs that support families and our nation's economy. Without congressional support, child care programs face uncertainty, directly impacting the well-being of the children and families we serve. What can you do? Take action! contact your representatives and urge them to support the $16 billion funding request. & Read the insightful Newsweek article by Suzanne McCormick, President and CEO of YMCA of the USA (National Resource Office), to understand this crucial need: https://lnkd.in/eAn3j-3s Let's continue supporting the futures of the children, families and employers who depend on us and our early learning, afterschool and summer programming. #ChildCareFunding #SupportFamilies #YMCA #CongressAction

I am not on here as much as I used to be. As more families find out about Operation Child Care Project I am finding myself with less and less free time. To give you a glimpse of what is happening in our case management right now, I will highlight a few trouble areas: - The new DoD Pilot Meal Initiative went live April 1, 2024. This pilot offers a small subsidy (not exceeding $100) when a qualifying child care center charges extra for meals (or includes it in tuition but raises tuition). We have been pushing our families to apply for this when they meet the eligibility, but not a single family has gained access. - Active duty families who have gained access to the MCCYN program are battling the subsidy provider weekly to ensure that financial support is coming. This is creating compounding anxiety and uncertainty. Show me a service member who can focus on the mission when they don't know if their child is safe and I can show you someone on their way out of the service. One active duty service member, just this week, picked up a part-time job in addition to their service to cover the cost of child care that they knew would be safe for their special needs child. - Single transitioning service members nationally lack child care support. Any programs they had access to during their service are inaccessible, and the cost of child care is THE barrier to entry into the workforce. We have thousands of VSOs focused on employment, housing, and food. Child care continues to be a rare support. Year to date, we have closed 215 cases. That is 215 military and veteran families who found support through OCC Project, support they could not find elsewhere. We are collecting this data to demonstrate that the situations these families are experiencing are not unique. This is over a decade of quiet struggles, compounding year over year because family voices are not being brought to the decision table. I urge my network (which I know cares deeply about military and veteran quality of life efforts) to let family voices decide what policies and programs are needed. We are seeing what top-down decision-making has created, and it's time to flip it around. #nationalchildcareinnovationsummit #militarychildcare #militaryfamilies #childcare #feeassistance

As pandemic relief funds dwindled earlier this year, concerns arose about potential preschool closures nationwide. In Colorado, maintaining early childhood centers has so far been successful, as the state’s universal preschool program and new funding sources like lodging taxes are supporting early childhood education in various communities. Chalkbeat Colorado has more below. #colorado #preschool #earlychildhoodeducation