Most Colorado families rely on license-exempt child care. Here’s what that means.

DENVER — Most Colorado parents rely on a network of friends, families and neighbors for child care. 

With rising child care costs and insufficient state funding to help cover costs, even more families may depend on these informal providers.

Like Jazmine Juarez-Gonzalez, 18, who brings her almost 2-year-old daughter to a free child care center on her high school campus. 

Without this free early childhood education center, partially covered by the now-frozen Colorado Child Care Assistance Program, Juarez-Gonzalez said she’d rely on her mom to watch her daughter so she could go to school.

Government agencies and child care organizations refer to this type of care as FFN child care, which stands for “family, friend and neighbor.” FFN child care is especially popular among immigrant families. 

The Colorado Department of Early Childhood, or CDEC, defines FFN providers as “legally license-exempt providers” who regularly take care of four or fewer children.

Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with child care licensing experts, FFN training directors, FFN providers and parents to understand the difference between licensed and license-exempt care and how home-based child care is regulated.

FFN providers can legally provide child care without a license if they meet certain requirements. Unlicensed care is unregulated by CDEC.

These providers can only watch four children — or more, if all the children are siblings — at once. No more than two of those children can be younger than two years old.

Although licenses are not required for FFN providers, several organizations offer training and certification programs to help standardize this informal form of child care.

The Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition’s PASO Institute is one of the longest-running of these programs. Founded almost 20 years ago to fill an education gap for Latino children who were more likely to be cared for at home than at a preschool, the 120-hour program is designed for Spanish-speaking providers.

Providers in the program learn about safety protocol, positive discipline strategies and how to design curriculum for early learners, among other skills.

Graduates of the PASO program qualify for the Child Development Associate credential, which is a nationally recognized ECE professional certification.

Mirla Low, the early childhood education program director at the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, has been with the PASO program since the beginning. 

Low said it took a lot of convincing to get FFN caregivers to take the program at first. That’s not a problem anymore, she said, with almost 100 providers graduating from the program each year.

“There’s still people that just want to learn more information to better support the children [they watch.] Many of them want to become a teacher or open their own business, like a home day care,” Low said.

Yesinda Castañeda Romero graduated from the PASO program two years ago. Before that, she watched friends’ and neighbors’ children for free.

“I have always taken care of children, but I did it as a favor to other people, and then I wanted to do it as a business,” Castañeda Romero said.

Since getting her certification, Castañeda Romero said her child care business, which she runs out of her home, is doing well.

Denise Hernandez trusted Castañeda Romero to watch her son before she got certified. They met through their husbands and live near each other in Thornton. 

Now that Castañeda Romero offers child care as a business, Hernandez pays for her services. At about $600 a month, she said it’s still much more affordable than other day care centers she’s looked at, which cost more than $2,000 a month.

Hernandez said it didn’t bother her that Castañeda Romero didn’t have her license because she knew her personally. 

Without that connection, she said she’d probably look for a licensed provider. Though she’d still prefer home-based care because she thinks it’s more personalized and trustworthy.