Transforming Early Childhood and Child Care in New Mexico
Child Care Next (CCN)
The SWLC participates as a member of New Mexico’s Child Care Next (CCN) team. The intention of the CCN project is to reimagine a system that is robust and responsive and improves the lives of all stakeholders, including Native Americans living on tribal lands or off-reservation. The goal of the CCN New Mexico State team is to ensure equitable, accessible, high-quality, affordable, culturally relevant child care with a diverse, well-paid, and well-supported workforce.
Addressing affordability and access to early childhood education in NM will benefit all families with children under thirteen, local businesses, and the broader economy. When affordable childcare in New Mexico is inaccessible, only 27% of mothers with children under five can maintain their usual work hours. Single-parent households are also disproportionately impacted by the lack of reliable child care options.
Creating Equitable Pay for the Child Care Workforce
The CCN team is focused on establishing child care workforce pay equity and dignified wages for the early childhood workforce, ensuring that every family—especially low-income and tribal families—has access to high-quality early childhood education.
The child care workforce is overwhelmingly made up of women of color child care workers, and our emphasis on equitable policy development and implementation will have a lasting impact on the economic well-being of providers and their families.
Free Child Care Eligibility
To address affordability, New Mexico expanded access to free child care eligibility by eliminating co-pays for families earning at or below 400% of the federal poverty level. In addition, the CCN team successfully advocated for the elimination of the Gross Receipts Tax on child care subsidies in New Mexico, which previously burdened families with unmanageable costs.
To learn more about early childhood and child care resources in New Mexico, visit the NM ECECD page.
Your Impact. Their Future.
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The Southwest Women’s Law Center focuses on issues that impact women and girls around reproductive rights, economic security, and gender discrimination.
We fight for policies that lift women and their families from poverty, including pay equity, paid family and medical leave, and pregnant worker accommodation.
Stand with us. Together we can forge a future of equality, safety, and freedom for all women.
