It’s Time to Care About Care

Welcome to Pennsylvania's toolkit for businesses, industries, and communities of all sizes to support working families. Investments in Caring PA is Pennsylvania's resource for employers to assist their employees in finding access to quality care. This toolkit provides information and resources to identify new or expanded ways to strengthen your workforce and your bottom line.

Investments in Caring PA is an initiative of the Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission.

Help Employees Find Quality Child Care

Why Do Employers Care About Care?

This section of the toolkit includes research about the benefits of quality child care, as well as county-specific data on pre-k and child care access.

Children are Tomorrow’s Workforce

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This section of the toolkit includes data on the cost of child care, including an interactive living expense calculator.

Working Families are Today’s Workforce

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This section of the toolkit contains research demonstrating the economic impact to businesses and the economy due to insufficient child care.

Care = Business and Economic ROI

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This section of the toolkit contains information about the child care workforce, equity, and a broken business model.

Quality Child Care Businesses are Critical Infrastructure

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How Can Employers Care About Care?

This section of the toolkit includes resources to help employers determine need and develop strategies, including an employee survey and technical assistance.

Determine Employee Need

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This section of the toolkit provides examples on how to support working families through providing information, tax strategies, and HR policies.

HR Benefits, Policies & Strategies

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This section of the toolkit contains information on how to provide child care assistance to employees, including on-site and partnering with near-site providers.

Increase Quality Child Care Access

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This section of the toolkit highlights how businesses can advocate for and support the child care system and workforce.

Advance the Quality Child Care System

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Small business owners often experience how a lack of access to affordable, quality child care leads to increased absenteeism and decreased productivity. While some child care assistance options are cost and time-prohibitive, there are often overlooked options that can help mitigate challenges to better support working families.

Our Approach

It’s time to care about care. Through the Investments in Caring initiative, we provide leadership, inspiration, expertise, and powerful data to engage employers, foster relationships, and encourage partnerships within the private sector and between the public and private sectors. We act as a hub for employers to access resources, tools, and technical assistance to increase private and public support, partnerships, and strategies that allow working parents to access affordable, quality child care. We encourage change by convening and building a unified voice of stakeholders for public and private investments by recognizing employers that champion action to improve access to quality child care.

Learn More About the Investments in Caring PA Initiative

Quality Child Care is Quality Early Learning

“Researchers note that investing in the care infrastructure after the Great Recession of 2008-09 would have yielded twice as many jobs as our investments in traditional physical infrastructure alone. It’s time to recognize the changing nature and meaning of infrastructure… Today, the concept remains agile enough to help restore a fragmented economy and, with child care as a foundation, bring people back to work.”

– Thomas P. Foley and Stephanie Nycum Doliveira, co-chairs of the Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission. Foley is President of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania and Doliveira is Vice President for Human Resources with Sheetz.

Thomas P. Foley Thomas P. Foley | President, AICUP Co-chair, PA ELIC
Stephanie Doliveira Stephanie Doliveira | Vice President, Human Resources, Sheetz Co-chair, PA ELIC

Contact

Whether you define success for Pennsylvania as a stronger economy, reduced crime, successful students, or thriving communities, high-quality early childhood education is the key. Let us know your questions or how you’d like to get involved.

Andrea Heberlein
Executive Director
andrea@paearlylearning.com
C.717.327.0107

Sara Lauver
Associate Director
sara@paearlylearning.com
C.570.847.5903