400,000 children on federal childcare assistance waitlists, report finds

CCDF serves just 22 percent of eligible families nationwide each month

An estimated 400,000 children were on waitlists for federal childcare assistance programs across the United States in the second half of 2025, according to a report released in May by the National Women’s Law Center. The figure has more than tripled in roughly two years — from around 118,800 children recorded in early 2024 — and approaches the population of Minneapolis.

Seventeen states currently maintain waitlists for childcare assistance or have stopped accepting new applications, the NWLC report found. (In states where county governments run childcare assistance, waitlists may exist in some counties but not others.) Karen Schulman, senior director of state childcare policy at the National Women’s Law Center, said she does not recall a previous period when this many children were in line for assistance at once. In 2001, twenty-one states had waitlists, but they encompassed roughly 202,900 children — about half the current total.

The Child Care and Development Fund, the federal government’s main vehicle for helping low-income families pay for childcare, serves more than 1.6 million children in a typical month. Schulman and state officials interviewed by NPR attribute the expanding waitlists to several converging forces: more low-income families seeking assistance, federal COVID-19 relief money that temporarily propped up the system running out, and CCDF appropriations that have not grown enough to meet demand as childcare costs have risen.

Valentina Sosa of Cypress, Texas, first applied for childcare assistance for her 18-month-old daughter, Ameea, in March. She remains on a waiting list. Sosa works part-time as a real estate assistant earning around $300 per week; the cheapest childcare option she found was $975 per month at a local church. While the family waits, Ameea mostly stays home with Sosa, who manages to work around 20 hours per week when her daughter is eating lunch or taking a nap.

“I know she needs the development that she’s not getting, the engagement that she’s not getting here with me, because if I’m working, I can only do so much,” Sosa, a single mother, said. “That’s horrible to see for her. But I do what I can.”

Federal pandemic relief once buoyed the childcare sector. Roughly $39 billion from the American Rescue Plan went toward childcare, but states had to spend those dollars by September 2024. Schulman said CCDF funding has been “stalling” in recent years. Some states facing budgetary pressures have also had less of their own money to divert to childcare assistance programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families dollars they could otherwise spend elsewhere.

Oregon illustrates the trade-off states encounter. The state established a statewide waitlist in 2023 that currently has around 26,000 children waiting to apply, though not all may be eligible. Certain priority groups, such as families in the state’s child welfare system, can bypass the waitlist. Beyond those exemptions, no families have come off the waitlist in nearly three years.

Oregon officials said the state chose to keep co-payments low — typically 2% to 4% of a family’s income, well below the 7% maximum previously allowed under federal rule — and to pay providers at higher rates. “Oregon really has chosen to focus on maintaining that quality of programming that works well for providers and families by keeping those copays low, paying providers well,” Alyssa Chatterjee, director of Oregon’s Department of Early Learning and Care, said. “That means we have to serve fewer families with the resources available.”

That trade-off between breadth of coverage and depth of subsidy is one state officials across the country are wrestling with, said Jordan Pargeter, federal initiatives and strategic policy administrator in Oregon’s Department of Early Learning and Care. “Is it better to serve more families but not help them very much with the cost of care?” Pargeter asked. “Or is it better to serve less families but actually get closer to the true cost of care that providers are facing?”

Because of the funding pressures, the CCDF only reaches a fraction of the families it was designed for. The program has had one of the lowest participation rates among federal safety-net programs, with just 22% of families who qualify under their state’s rules receiving assistance in a typical month. The shortfall comes as childcare costs spike nationwide. According to the group Child Care Aware of America, childcare costs increased 29% between 2020 and 2024.

Parents with very young, preschool-aged children — for whom public schooling is not yet an option — may be at a particular disadvantage. Kim Kofron, executive director of early childhood education at Children at Risk, a Texas nonprofit that advocates for children, said wait times of even a few years can shape a family’s options during a critical developmental window.

“If you think about a child’s life in that zero-to-five space, a one- or two-year waiting list is a huge period of that time,” Kofron said. There were more than 93,000 children on childcare assistance waitlists in Texas as of January 2025, according to the most recent data provided by the state.

The Trump administration said recent changes to the $12.3 billion CCDF program could help get more children off waitlists, but advocates worry the changes could also destabilize the childcare system for low-income families. During the Biden administration, officials overhauled CCDF rules to lower costs for families and make payments to childcare providers more predictable; states were pushed to cap family co-payments at 7% of household income and to pay providers in advance based on enrollment, rather than retroactively based on attendance.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently reversed those rules, citing in part the potential for fraud by childcare providers. In an emailed statement, the Administration for Children and Families said removing the 7% cap allows “states to halt costly implementation efforts and redirect funds toward serving additional children, including getting more children off waitlists and into child care. This allows states to serve more children as they deem possible.” The statement noted that while the Trump administration removed those Biden-era requirements, states could still adhere to the previous rules.

Kofron said all levels of government will need to step up to ensure the national system works as intended. Ideally, she said, Congress would increase CCDF funding, states would find other revenue sources to supplement their programs, and cities and counties would work on their own solutions to high childcare costs.

“When we all have a piece of the pie, then we can really actually get our waitlists down to a manageable level and actually get families the care that they need,” Kofron said.