OUR CHILD CARE SYSTEM ISN’T WORKING.
Be part of the solution.
In Cleveland and across Cuyahoga County,
parents struggle to balance the need to work with available child care options.
Parents overwhelmingly describe their child care options as unaffordable, low quality, or simply inaccessible. That leads to lost wages, lower productivity, lost revenue, high turnover, and a growing number of workers on the sidelines.
78%
of parents say child care is not accessible.
50%
higher unemployment rate in Cleveland due to inadequate child care.
$646M
lost annually in Cuyahoga County due to inadequate child care.
Early Matters NEO coalition members are already supporting working parents.
Research makes clear that employers who care about child care have a competitive advantage when it comes to attracting and retaining employees.
-
![]()
Starting Point
Starting Point is supporting northeast Ohio employers by connecting working parents to high-quality child care options that work for them.
Starting Point is also the local lead for Ohio’s new Child Care Business Partnerships program that can support your workforce by subsidizing the cost of implementing child care benefits for two years and helping you build partnerships with child care programs in your community.
-
![]()
Greater Cleveland Works
Greater Cleveland Works is the designated workforce development board for Cleveland and Cuyahoga County — leading innovative initiatives that better connect people to quality jobs and employers to talent, raising and distributing funding to strengthen our local ecosystem, and expanding access to wraparound services that reduce racial disparities, enable economic mobility, and grow our regional economy.
Greater Cleveland Works supports employers in creating strategies for talent attraction and retention through best practices that create high-quality employment experiences.
-
![]()
Cuyahoga County Office of Early Childhood | Invest in Children
In 2025, the National Association of Counties (NACo) tapped Cuyahoga County and six other peer localities from around the country to serve as its inaugural Childcare Supply Network, an aspect of the Investing in America project.
The group, composed of professionals from the child care, philanthropic and economic development sectors, examined how families’ access to affordable, high‑quality child care influences local economies and shapes the future workforce. It identified community‑level barriers to child care availability and collaborated to design sustainable solutions that meet local child care needs.
Join these leaders and make a difference for your employees.
Coalition Members
