Illuminating Child Care: Breaking Barriers for Families Across Colorado

A recreational vehicle retrofitted into an infant and toddler child care classroom

Finding child care is hard enough. For parents navigating recovery, unemployment, housing instability, and child welfare involvement, it can feel impossible. That’s why Illuminate Colorado’s Illuminating Child Care (ICC) program exists—to remove one of the biggest barriers to treatment and support: safe, reliable child care.

And this past year, the results were powerful.

A Year of Growth and Impact

Between July 2024 and June 2025, Illuminating Child Care:

Cared for 148 children, a 38% increase from last year.
Supported 104 caregivers, who were then able to attend 2,300+ hours of treatment.
Expanded to 15 sites across three regions, adding new services in both the San Luis Valley and Denver Metro area.

Families used services an average of eight times a year, but one family relied on ICC 95 times, showing both the depth of need and the program’s role in keeping recovery on track.

Meeting Families Where They Are

Illuminating Child Care is delivered in a unique way: retrofitted RVs that have been transformed into classrooms for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. These classrooms travel to behavioral health and family support centers, reducing barriers by bringing care directly to families where and when they need it most.

Illuminate staff member playing with two toddlers

This year, ICC classrooms gave children a safe, nurturing space to play, learn, and grow, while giving caregivers the ability to focus fully on their recovery.

As one parent shared:

“It’s nice knowing they [children] are close to you. If they need anything, I could just walk over there. Also, they [teachers] have a warmth to them. They just seem like they are really good with kids, and you can tell—when I bring her, she’s happy.”

Why This Matters

The need is urgent. Nationally, only 1 in 19 treatment centers (just 5.5%) provide child care. Research shows that difficulty finding child care is one of the strongest predictors of maternal neglect, outweighing even the severity of drug use or a history of trauma.

Here in Colorado, most ICC participants are single parents (2 in 3), half are unemployed, and nearly one-third are involved with child welfare. These challenges are compounding and demonstrate the importance of having a no-cost, high-quality child care model that engages families in building Protective Factors.

Caregivers Agree: ICC Works

Caregivers overwhelmingly report that ICC is essential:

100% say their child’s needs are being met
95% say services are always necessary for them to participate in treatment
100% are satisfied or very satisfied with the program

Or, as one participant put it:

“For a little while, I did have him coming with me, but it was just not great…Either it would be hard for everyone to focus—or I would have to leave the group to take care of him and then be missing a lot of it.”

Looking Ahead

As demand continues to grow, Illuminate Colorado is deepening partnerships and continuing to convene a statewide advisory board of experts to guide program sustainability. Together, we’re working to ensure that more families have access to this critical support.

Because when parents are able to focus on healing, kids get the safe, stable, nurturing care they deserve and families have a brighter path forward.

View the Full 2024-2025 ICC Report

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