Minnesota's 2026 session produced practical gains for child care, foster-care access, and afterschool programming while setting up larger early childhood and family-support debates for 2027.

We know that family members play a crucial role in the early care and education of young children. Typically, we think of these family members as adults such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, close friends etc. We often overlook the role that older siblings or teen relatives may have in the early care and education field. This type of child care has been happening for decades and yet it is not recognized as a viable option for parents of young children. There may be good reasons for this,...