New program expands ways to find quality, affordable child care for military families.
“The waitlists at the CDC are so long. I’ll probably PCS again before a spot opens up,” says Melissa Cordova, an Air Force spouse, as she searches online for alternate child care options for her 3-year-old daughter. She’s referring to the military-operated Child Development Center at her local military installation in Virginia and the waitlist for affordable high-quality child care the CDC can offer military spouses.
But Melissa isn’t scrolling for random, unvetted childcare online. She’s actually searching on MilitaryChildCare.com to enroll in the alternative child care program called Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood.
Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN) is a DoD fee assistance program for eligible families who cannot access military-operated child care due to distance or waitlists. With fee assistance, a portion of the child care costs is paid to offset the costs of community-based care. This makes it easier for military families to afford quality child care from local community providers.
DoD has high standards for local child care providers to be eligible options for military families through MCCYN. Providers must be nationally accredited in order to make their list. But not all child care providers near military installations have access to nationally accredited programs—which again adds to the lack of available and affordable child care, especially in places identified as child care deserts for military families.
Finding affordable childcare for military families may be easier with the expansion of MCCYN. The expanded child care program, named MCCYN-PLUS, offers parents more opportunities to find high quality providers in their community.
“MCCYN-PLUS maintains high quality standards by depending on the states’ child care quality rating and improvement systems. Qualifying civilian providers must meet DoD requirements, which include being licensed and regulated by the state with annual licensing agency inspections, completing employee background checks and participating in their state’s quality rating and improvement system,” according to a DoD press release issued in September.
The pilot program expansion was only offered to families in Virginia, Maryland, Nevada and Washington. But DoD added Miami-Dade County in Florida to the list in September, with Texas and Colorado ready to onboard by November. Their goal is to rapidly expand the program to remaining states as soon as possible.
Melissa hopes enrolling in MCCYN-PLUS will help her find a loving, safe provider for her daughter so she can return to work. “I appreciate what they are trying to do for families like mine. We really wanted to use CDC because we know the providers are excellent, but I’m hopeful I can find something closer to my home with the same high-quality, but in my budget. Child care is really expensive in Northern Virginia, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed this will work out.”
