The Family Conservancy Awarded Grant to Empower Parent Advocates and Advance Early Childhood Policy

Kansas City — The Family Conservancy (TFC) has been awarded a grant from Child Care Aware® of America to launch a bold new initiative designed to empower parents to become strong advocates for early childhood policy change. The project aims to remove barriers to civic engagement by equipping families with the tools, training, and support to lead solutions to our community’s child care crisis.

This new initiative builds on TFC’s recent partnership with IDEO.org to better understand how families make decisions about child care, the barriers they encounter, and the changes they want to see. Through surveys and interviews with 150 local parents, the project revealed a clear message: families don’t want to choose between affordability and quality. They’re seeking care that is safe, consistent, and values the professionals who provide it. Most importantly, with the right tools and support, parents are ready to help drive change.

“At The Family Conservancy, we believe that the people closest to the challenges are also closest to the solutions,” said Paula Neth, The Family Conservancy CEO. “By equipping families with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to advocate — not just for their own children, but for systems-level change — we’re investing in a stronger, more equitable future for all children in our community.”
Through a tiered “ladder of engagement,” families will move from building awareness to leading direct advocacy efforts — sharing their stories, meeting with lawmakers, participating in listening sessions, and contributing to regional policy change.

Community members interested in getting involved can sign up for TFC’s advocacy alerts to receive project updates and simple, actionable ways to support the effort.

Why it matters:

Access to affordable, high-quality child care is not a luxury — it’s a necessity for family stability, child development, and a thriving economy. Yet for too many families, it remains out of reach. This initiative shifts the conversation from speaking about families to empowering them to speak for themselves. By building a network of informed, confident parent advocates, The Family Conservancy is working to ensure that child care policies reflect real experiences — not just statistics.

To explore the scale of the child care crisis in our region, visit TFC’s child care dashboard for current data on access, affordability, and unmet demand across the Kansas City metro.