Stimulus Learning Session: Using ARPA Funds to Transform Early Childhood and Family Supports

This Learning Series Recap summarizes lessons from state and local government leaders on how the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) can be used to build more responsive, holistic, and equitable supports for children and families. The insights come from a learning session on ‘Early Childhood and Families’, which makes up part of the GPL’s broader Stimulus Learning Series.

Rethinking children and family supports using ARPA funds

For years, state and local government leaders across the country have been building a movement to rethink supports for vulnerable children and families, seeking to create a more holistic, accessible, and responsive system. These leaders see the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) as an unprecedented opportunity to transform the child support system, increasing accessibility to early childhood programs, reimagining punitive child welfare interventions, and expanding parental supports. In particular, government partners told the GPL that ARPA funds provide a rare opportunity to tackle major challenges facing existing early childhood and family services, including:

• Inaccessible supports: Demand for supports like childcare and early learning programs outpace supply, particularly in marginalized communities, leading to long waitlists; complex systems make it difficult for caregivers to get
• Narrow, reactive help: Support often comes too late (after a crisis had occurred), punitive and/or limited services sometimes do not reflect what we know about child development, and it is difficult to comprehensively offer families support to meet basic
• Stretched infrastructure: Providers often struggle to hire and retain qualified staff, and do not have the capacity to modernize IT systems to offer responsive virtual Residents are often shut out from shaping the resources that best meet their needs.

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