LIIF President Kim Latimer-Nelligan joined national leaders in early childhood policy on September 17 at the Forward With Families forum in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, presented by Ascend at the Aspen Institute and convened with support from LIIF. Also present at the forum were LIIF ECE team members Angie Garling, Shelly Masur, Kim DiGiacomo, Mona Malan, Esmeralda Martin-Singh and Cristina Gonzalez, as well as Chief External Affairs Officer Mindy Binderman.
The gathering brought together delegations from states and regions across the country for tailored conversations centered on advancing universal child care, drawing on New Mexico’s landmark policy work as a model and inviting teams to share their own progress, goals, and plans for the road ahead. During her panel Kim shared lessons gleaned from LIIF’s extensive research work in New Mexico on child care access, underscoring the importance of looking beyond individual projects to focus on the systems and relationships that support providers over time.
As part of the forum’s national perspectives session on “Building Childcare Supply & Infrastructure,” Latimer-Nelligan joined Kali Thorne Ladd, CEO of Children’s Institute, in a lightning-talk conversation moderated by Nicole Weissman, Director of Communication at Ascend. The session broadened the day’s regional focus with national insights and trends, surfacing ideas and considerations to inform the deeper planning and collaboration ahead for states pursuing child care for all families.
“One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that capital is necessary, but not sufficient.
The places making the most progress are combining financing, technical assistance, policy support, and cross-sector partnerships,” said Kim during her panel’s Q&A. “The strongest outcomes occur when state agencies, financing partners, CDFIs, technical assistance providers, local governments, and community organizations are working together toward a common goal.”
Years ago, when New Mexico first began planning for what became Governor Lujan Grisham’s ambitious and groundbreaking universal child care policy, the state turned to Low Income Investment Fund to help lay the groundwork. Drawing on our deep well of expertise in early care and education (ECE), LIIF team members designed and implemented a comprehensive set of surveys and landscape analyses of families, providers and community members in every corner of New Mexico to help equip state policymakers with the data, analysis and tools they needed to craft effective policies that met New Mexicans’ needs.