National Research Institute Highlights Kentucky’s Innovative Approach to Child Care Affordability

A new national report from the Buffett Early Childhood Institute highlights Kentucky’s recent legislative efforts to address child care affordability for working families and support workforce participation.

The report, From Pilot to Policy: Lessons Learned from Five Tri-Share Models, examines child care cost-sharing programs in five states and includes a case study of Kentucky’s Employee Child Care Assistance Partnership (ECCAP) program, which was created by the General Assembly as a pilot through House Bill 499 in 2022 and later received continued funding in the 2024 budget session.

ECCAP allows employers to partner with the state to help reduce child care costs for middle-class working families. Employer contributions are matched by the state on a sliding scale, with families paying the remaining costs.

According to the report, Tri-Share programs are built around three core objectives: improving affordability for working parents, strengthening employers’ ability to recruit and retain workers, and stabilizing child care providers through predictable, reliable payments.

In its analysis of Kentucky’s model, the Buffett Institute notes that ECCAP expands access by serving families whose incomes are too high for the traditional subsidy eligibility but still struggle with the cost of child care. The report also highlights the flexibility of Kentucky’s employer-driven approach, which broadens eligibility for families.

“Rather than treating child care as a private family expense or a means-tested public benefit, Tri-Share models recognize it as shared economic responsibility—essential to workforce participation, business productivity, and public economic health,” the report says.

In the 2026 legislative session, the Kentucky Collaborative on Child Care, established by the Chamber in 2024, will be working to strengthen ECCAP by advocating for key changes to the program to make it easier for Kentucky employers and providers to utilize.

This new report from the Buffett Early Childhood Institute is not the first time the organization has highlighted Kentucky for child care innovation. In 2024, the Institute published a report on the state’s successful “free child care for child care workers” program. The report noted that, “Kentucky was the first state to make child care workers eligible for publicly funded child care subsidy regardless of their household income.” It also found that, at the time of publication, at least seven states had adopted Kentucky’s policy, including Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, and North Dakota.

Learn more about Kentucky’s ECCAP program at kychamber.com/childcare.