12. How do the changes to wrap-around care and summer care impact providers?

Families work with ECECD and their child care provider to determine the number of hours of care that work best for them. Families are able to choose full-time care, wrap-around care, or part-time care.

Wrap-around care is child care that fits around other programs, like Head Start, Early Head Start, NM PreK, or school. It also includes care during summer breaks for school-age children. The current rate for wrap-around care was designed to pay a steady, continuous rate to providers throughout the year for families who use part-day wrap-around care during the school year and full-time day care in the summer. This rate is averaged throughout the year to create steady revenue for programs to cover the cost of full-time summer care and part-time school-year care for that child.

This change was adopted to reduce administrative burdens on families, child care providers, and ECECD staff who previously processed a large number of changes to Child Care Assistance agreements at the beginning and end of the school year.