Key Learnings From the First Complete TPP Implementation: Announcing the 18-Month Colorado TPP Report

By: Lamisa Mustafa, MPP and Callie Silver, PhD, Stanford Center on Early Childhood

Two years ago, Home Grown launched the Thriving Providers Project (TPP) to uplift home-based child care (HBCC) providers and engender policy shifts around stable, increased compensation for this essential, yet underpaid workforce. We are thrilled that the first pilot of this direct cash transfer (DCT) initiative successfully concluded in Colorado. For 18 months between July 2022 and April 2024, 100 providers received monthly payments of $500, as well as access to psychological and peer support services. 

Since TPP began, the Stanford Center on Early Childhood (SCEC) has led a mixed-methods evaluation grounded in rapid-cycle continuous improvement and community engagement. Of the 100 TPP participants, 54 opted into the evaluation and completed monthly surveys. The study sample was primarily Family, Friend and Neighbor (FFN) caregivers who identified as female, spoke Spanish and reported a household income below 200% FPL. With TPP implementation in Colorado now complete, we are excited to share the 18-month report, which highlights findings from the SCEC’s evaluation. 

Key learnings include: 

• FFN caregivers found TPP enrollment easy and accessible, and they reported receiving reliable and timely payments. These findings provide proof of concept for the DCT methodology to inform states’ implementation of the new Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) rule that requires timely and reliable mechanisms for paying HBCC providers.

• Qualitative data indicated that FFN caregivers experienced more income stability and used the extra money to meet basic needs. These findings suggest the potential for temporary DCTs to reduce providers’ experiences of income volatility and material hardship, as well as the need for systemic changes to improve providers’ economic and overall well-being. 

• Many FFN caregivers reported that the DCTs allowed them to purchase resources for the children in their care, be more present in caretaking and engage in more professional development. One focus group participant shared, “[TPP] helped me to want to … keep informing myself and to keep taking courses to give the best of myself.” These findings point to the fact that children may have benefited from providers’ enrollment in TPP because FFN caregivers invested in increasing the quality of their services.

• According to multiple FFN caregivers, the DCTs made them feel more financially stable, less stressed and more valued. One FFN caregiver noted, “[TPP] made a big difference … it kept me calmer, more relaxed, and that is reflected in the care of the children.” 

• Some FFN caregivers reported that the support from TPP made them feel more confident that they could continue their jobs, indicating that compensation strategies like DCTs can help stabilize the ECE workforce. One FFN caregiver stated, “When I started receiving the TPP, not only did I stay …  but it also helped me to pay for the most essential expenses.”

• FFN caregivers reported greater comfort with CBOs, which is critical in expanding their public benefits access. However, low rates of benefit utilization during TPP indicate that there are other barriers — like immigration status and licensure — that limit FFN caregivers’ take-up of public benefits. TPP is a model for the trust-building that CBOs can do to ensure that FFN caregivers are aware of the benefits available to them and receive support to receive those benefits. TPP also informs ongoing policy advocacy efforts to make accessing public benefits less burdensome for FFN caregivers.

As TPP implementation continues in Philadelphia and New York City and expands to Los Angeles in 2025, we look forward to learning more about providers’ experiences of TPP in these new sites. We will examine how our takeaways may be shaped by the unique needs and local contexts of TPP participants in different communities. This report exemplifies the importance of directly engaging provider consultants to ensure that research reflects participants’ lived experiences. This evaluation of TPP in Colorado speaks to the potential positive impacts that providing unrestricted wage supplements can have on HBCC providers’ financial and psychological well-being, job retention and professional growth, and the quality of their caretaking.

This report is the culmination of deep partnership between HBCC providers, CBOs and other key informants. This blog post is only a snapshot, and we highly encourage anyone interested in this work to read the full report to learn more about our process and FFN caregivers’ testimonies regarding their experiences with TPP.