States are Stepping Up to Support Child Care Workers. Montana Should Follow Suit.

Across Montana, families struggle to find stable and affordable child care. When parents cannot access care, they cannot fully participate in work, and this has a ripple effect on the broader workforce, employers, and our state economy. Often the underlying issue is workforce – the child care workforce. Child care workers play an essential role in our economy, providing care and education that families need and that builds a strong foundation for young children.

Too often, child care workers do not earn wages that reflect the value of this essential work. As a result, the turnover rate among the workforce often exceeds 30 percent. When a provider lacks a stable workforce, they are faced with reducing enrollment, cutting hours, or even shutting their doors entirely. Many working parents with young children have stories of their child care facility cutting hours or days, and in some instances, closing with little notice, all due to a lack of workers. This instability impacts families and businesses.

The good news is that Montana and many other states have found a data-driven solution that can make a real difference in recruiting and retaining child care workers: helping child care workers pay for care for their own children. In 2023, Montana established the Child Care Worker (CCW) pilot program, expanding the Best Beginnings scholarship to certain child care workers to help cover child care costs. The goal was to improve providers’ recruitment and retention of child care workers and increase the affordability of care for families. In 2025, the pilot program supported 141 staff who would otherwise not have been eligible for Best Beginnings, supporting quality child care for 246 kids.

And here’s the thing: it worked. Over the course of the program, the turnover rates of participating workers were less than half that of workers not in the program. Three-fourths of child care participating providers surveyed said they used the CCW pilot program as a recruitment tool, and 92 percent felt that offering child care assistance was a benefit to their program. Among staff, 90 percent reported that the availability of child care assistance played a significant role in their desire to stay. Unfortunately, the Department of Public Health and Human Services ended the pilot in 2025, and Gov. Gianforte vetoed the bill that would have maintained and invested in this evidence-based solution.

The success of Montana’s pilot is not unique; many states are now stepping up to provide similar assistance, recognizing the critical role child care workers play in the broader economy. At least eight states – Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Utah – provide some form of child care assistance for child care workers. Several more states are considering similar legislation in 2026. Last month, Iowa made permanent its pilot program extending child care assistance to all child care worker parents. In supporting and signing the legislation into law, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds stated the program had become “the single most effective way to reduce staff turnover in child care centers.”

Montana can continue its success of the CCW pilot program. In 2025, the Legislature established the Early Childhood Account Board to decide how to invest funding deposited as part of the larger Growth and Opportunity (GO) Trust. The Montana Early Childhood Account (MECA) was established with a one-time transfer of $10 million and will receive approximately $2 million annually in interest from the larger GO Trust. Hundreds of child care providers and workers have voiced strong support for continuing the CCW pilot and for prioritizing MECA funds to address the underlying challenge of retaining the child care workforce. Unfortunately, the Early Childhood Account Board has yet to put funds toward the workforce, but the Board will continue to meet throughout 2026 to gather feedback and consider proposals.

Child care workers have long shouldered the burden of inadequate funding in the child care system. To truly address the foundational issues within the system, we must invest in the child care workforce. Advocates for the GO Trust and Early Childhood Account Board touted it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but that will only hold true if we invest these funds to address the core challenges of the child care system and in ways we know will make a difference.