Early childhood advocates provide a voice for young children. An advocate works to ensure that children’s needs are recognized and responded to. As someone who cares about young children and their families, you are likely already taking on advocacy. Here, you can learn how to further those efforts, stay up-to-date on legislation, take steps to contact elected officials, and make a difference in the laws and policies that affect Maryland’s young children.
If you can pick up the phone or write a letter, you can become an effective advocate. You don’t need special training, experience, or money; all you need is passion and determination.
Accomplishments
Learn about Maryland Family Networks recent accomplishments in legislation and public policy
Paid Family Leave
For many Marylanders, taking time to care for family members is impossible because they do not have paid family leave time. We want to change that.
Become An Advocate
Early childhood advocates help provide a voice for young children, working to ensure that children’s needs are recognized and addressed. Learn how to become an advocate, take steps to contact elected officials, and make a difference in the laws and policies that affect Maryland’s young children.
Sign Up For Public Policy Alerts
Join the conversation by signing up for public policy alerts, so you can learn what is going on in your district and statewide. Lend your voice by submitting comments or questions.
Legislative Priorities
The Public Policy priorities are determined by annual balloting by MFN’s Public Policy Committee. They reflect issues that are top of mind for providers and advocates in the field. Learn more about our Top 10
Public Policy Committee Resources
Public policy meeting materials, resources and publications and information about our work in Annapolis
Our Work This Session
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic making the day-to-day advocacy look a little different, we are nonetheless hard at work on a number of public policy issues of interest to those who care for and about young children.
Maryland Child Care Mapping
MFN and Upfront, a software company that validates and provides access to childcare data, developed a real-time interactive mapping tool to make data about the availability of care more transparent. The map breaks down to hyper local information and type of program so government officials and policymakers will be able to better understand where child care deserts are throughout the state or even by neighborhood. Historically, this type of data is only updated yearly and has never been built to this scale in a public-facing tool. By making this type of child care data transparent, policy makers have valuable information to support initiatives for the regions that need it most.