Across the country, city leaders are increasingly recognizing child care as core civic infrastructure. When families cannot find or afford care, parents lose work hours, employers lose talent, children miss early learning opportunities, and local economies feel the strain. As a former city councilmember who made child care a priority, I was eager to work with cities in Georgia as they explored how to build and sustain child care supply. That work offered a unique window into different communities—their distinct challenges, their shared concerns, and the practical ways cities can make child care a public priority. 

Local governments may not control every lever in the child care system, but they can play a powerful role in convening partners, aligning resources, removing barriers, and keeping young children and families at the center of public decision-making. 

With support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, LIIF was fortunate to work with five Georgia cities and the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA). LIIF’s expertise in community development and child care gave the team a unique window into the ways cities can play a role in child care. After conducting a year-long study about the state of child care in Georgia, LIIF brought the idea of a city child care cohort to GMA and to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  

In partnership with GMA, LIIF helped the cities look at their data, consider different existing barriers, and build plans to expand child care supply that considered housing, economic development, transportation, and other city infrastructure. The cities, Albany, Athens, Augusta, Columbus and Savannah, have unique geographies, politics, demographics, and economic bases from which to build, and each brought together community teams to tackle the challenges. What worked and what we learned is reflected in the lessons below and demonstrate what’s needed to move cities from concern to action. 

The cities making the most progress usually have leaders who name child care as a public priority. That leadership can come from a mayor, councilmember, city manager, department head, or trusted community coalition. The title matters less than the function: someone must keep child care on the agenda when budgets are tight, departments are siloed, and competing priorities crowd the calendar.  

Public champions help translate child care from a private family challenge into a shared community responsibility and economic imperative. They also create space for city staff to ask questions: How do zoning rules affect providers? Could vacant public space support care? Are workforce development dollars reaching early educators? Are families with infants, toddlers, children with nontraditional work hours being considered?  

In Columbus, Georgia, for example, following the Mayor’s lead as he recognized the impact of lack of access to child care, the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley initiated a communitywide effort to better understand local child care needs. In partnership with LIIF, the organization conducted a family survey and facilitated employer focus groups to gather perspectives from across the community. LIIF’s analysis resulted in findings and recommendations that were shared in a citywide convening of leaders, employers, advocates, and policymakers, highlighting the impact of limited child care access on workforce participation and economic opportunity and identifying potential next steps. The United Way is moving forward to lead on some of those next steps including establishment of a child care solutions fund. The effort engaged a city councilmember and key municipal staff who have emerged as child care champions, helping to advance child care priorities within local government. 

Cities often don’t know where to begin. Most often they don’t administer subsidies or directly pay for child care. LIIF heard from cities in Georgia that knew child care was an issue but they didn’t know how big or what to tackle first. To understand what is happening in the community, cities can listen to providers, families and businesses and review data that helps reveal the scope of the problem either by using existing data sources or partnering with intermediaries like LIIF. Some cities held town halls with providers, others worked with LIIF to survey them, others conducted direct outreach to individual providers to understand their needs.  

The strongest local efforts treat families, providers, early educators, and community-based organizations as co-designers—not just stakeholders to be consulted after decisions have been made. Listening early helps cities avoid investing in solutions that look promising on paper but miss the realities of the daily life of their residents. In Albany, GA, the city heard from providers that they didn’t know how to navigate city processes. As a result, the city developed a guide for providers to help them as they sought to open new child care businesses. 

Many cities do not lack commitment; they lack a clear structure for turning commitment into implementation. Child care crosses multiple departments—economic development, planning, parks and recreation, libraries, housing, human services, workforce, and education. Without a governance structure, efforts can remain fragmented, dependent on individual relationships, or vulnerable to leadership transitions. 

Council and staff turnover can make this work especially hard to sustain. As happened during this project, an election or staff turnover can slow momentum and shift who is at the table. These changes may require advocates and intermediaries to identify new champions, bring new leaders up to speed on the issue, and reconnect the work to city goals. That is why child care efforts cannot depend solely on one committed person. Cities need durable structures—clear roles, written plans, cross-department teams, community partnerships, and regular reporting—that can carry the work forward even as individual leaders change. 

Effective governance does not have to look the same everywhere. Some cities lead from the mayor’s office or a department dedicated to early childhood while others rely on formal interagency teams, public-private partnerships, children’s cabinets, or community coalitions. What matters is clarity: who is responsible, how decisions are made, how community voice is included, and how progress will be sustained over time.  

Athens, Georgia, offers one example of this approach. The city convened a diverse group of stakeholders, including the local chamber of commerce, researchers, child care licensing experts, and community organizations focused on long-term growth and development, to develop a shared plan, engage residents, and guide implementation. This collaborative structure was intentionally designed to sustain momentum beyond the current mayoral administration. Across the project, support from the Georgia Municipal Association and Georgia Forward helped participating cities explore different models for addressing child care challenges and build the governance structures needed to drive lasting progress. 

One of the clearest municipal levers is the built environment. Cities influence where child care can operate, how expensive it is to open or expand, and whether providers can navigate permitting and inspection processes. Streamlined permitting, fee waivers, technical assistance, co-location in public facilities, and child care set-asides in housing or development projects can all reduce barriers to supply. 

Facilities work can be especially important for infant and toddler care, family child care homes, and providers serving neighborhoods where real estate costs are high or commercial space is limited. When cities view child care as essential infrastructure, planning and development decisions begin to look different. Recognizing this impact, Savannah worked with LIIF to review its zoning and fee structures and propose changes to both. It enacted local fee waivers for child care in its budget and has been working on addressing zoning restrictions in its code. By waiving fees, the city is lowering costs for child care providers who wish to open in Savannah. If passed, the proposed zoning reform will reduce barriers by considering parking flexibility and allowing expanded hours of operation. 

Cities need data to understand gaps, target investments, and measure progress. But local leaders often face imperfect information: fragmented provider data, changing enrollment patterns, limited wage data, or families who are difficult to reach through traditional surveys. The most effective cities use data as a learning tool rather than a reason to wait. 

A practical approach is to combine quantitative data with lived experience: mapping supply and demand, tracking family affordability, identifying neighborhoods with limited options, listening to providers about operational constraints, and revisiting assumptions as conditions change. Evaluation should be built into the work from the beginning so that cities can refine policies, document what is working, and make the case for sustained investment.  

In this project, each city started with what they knew and what they needed to know. Supported by LIIF, they further explored the areas where they needed more information. Columbus mapped transportation routes compared to the location of child care. Athens used data from the Athens Wellbeing Project. Savannah engaged regionally as massive economic growth and a strong tourism industry drive the need for child care. Albany worked with its regional child care resource and referral agency to understand licensing needs and barriers as it considers potential zoning changes.  

Child care gains traction when it is connected to issues that city leaders are already working to solve: economic development, workforce participation, housing stability, downtown recovery, public health, poverty reduction, and kindergarten readiness. These connections are not strategic packaging; they reflect the reality that child care is woven through nearly every part of community life. 

When cities integrate child care into broader plans, they create more entry points for action. A housing strategy can include on-site child care, as is happening in Savannah and Columbus through Purpose Built communities. A small business agenda can support family child care providers. A workforce plan can include early educators as is the case in Athens. A transportation plan can consider how families reach care, like Columbus’ mapping. The more child care is embedded across city priorities, the more durable the work becomes and the better it responds to the needs of the individual city. 

The biggest lesson from working with cities is that child care systems are built locally, relationship by relationship and decision by decision. Cities do not have to solve every problem alone, but they can create the conditions for solutions to take root. They can bring people together, remove practical barriers, invest in what works, and keep asking whether public systems are meeting the needs of young children, families, providers, and educators. 

Child care is often described as a crisis. Cities are showing that it can also be an opportunity: to build stronger economies, healthier neighborhoods, and more responsive public systems—starting with the youngest residents and the people who care for them.