Assessing child care supply and how it meets families’ needs is a key to ensuring access to care that supports parental employment and children’s development. If providers cannot meet these needs, it can undercut parents’ ability to work, go to school, and help their children thrive.

The Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) contracted with a team at the Urban Institute to conduct a study in 2024–25 that would help them better understand and estimate licensed child care supply across Georgia. As part of this partnership, we conducted a web-based survey of licensed child care learning centers and family child care learning homes in February and March 2025. This work is part of a multiyear partnership between DECAL and Urban’s early childhood team.

This brief examines the characteristics of families that providers consider their primary clientele, the types of requests parents and guardians made and whether providers can meet them, and how often families left care settings for reasons other than aging out of the program. Assessing supply also requires understanding how well it meets families’ unique needs. When family needs do not match the services their providers offer, they can face barriers to accessing care or may have to leave their care arrangement.

What We Learned

Some of the key findings include the following:

• Nearly all centers and homes responding to the survey were seeking to meet the needs of families that live or work nearby. A majority of providers considered families struggling to pay for child care their primary clientele. Some providers considered families affiliated with a particular employer, program, faith community, or school, and families experiencing crisis situations or who have medical needs or disabilities to be their primary clientele.
• Few providers served children from infancy to school age. Among providers who served infants, homes tended to have higher age minimums for enrollment than centers.
• Changes in program hours and food were the most frequent requests from families, with most providers saying they can change food but not hours. Homes were more likely than centers to allow children to stay longer for an extra fee.
• Centers and homes said that “usually just a few children” leave yearly for reasons other than aging out, with financial and behavioral challenges as top reasons.