Maryland Family Network is excited to once again offer our community an exciting way to embark on a stress-free adventure and support our mission at the same time.

Maryland Family Network is pleased to announce funding awards totaling over $1.9 million to 12 community-based agencies across the state in an integrated, prevention focused initiative to reduce child abuse and neglect and increase public awareness about ways our community at large can contribute to supporting strong and healthy families.

There’s a child care crisis in this country—and with emergency funding running out soon, it will get even worse. This urgency prompted the Democratic Women’s Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives to hold a shadow hearing today titled “The State of Child Care in America: Addressing the Looming Child Care Funding Cliffs for Women and Families.” MFN’s Laura Weeldreyer will speak as an expert witness before the Caucus.

MFN’s B3 Coalition has just announced a new resource to help legislators and advocates identify where families are struggling with food access.

Contact Members of the House Ways & Means Committee and Urge Support for HB 495 & Child Care Scholarship Funding

HB 495 will protect Maryland's critical investments in child care. It will help rebuild our child care capacity and support families. The bill hearing is February 15. Urge legislators to support child care!

The Sacrifices Parents Make: The urgent need to fix Child Care Scholarship today and secure Maryland's future highlights the extreme lengths many parents must go to in order to pay for child care. We surveyed thousands of parents across Maryland and talked to dozens of other parents in small group discussion-oriented workshops. They told us that the Child Care Scholarship program was too difficult to navigate, they were turned down for minor paperwork errors, and that materials were not available in Spanish or other languages. As a result, parents said they had to sacrifice things like healthy foods for their family, prescription medicine, medical check-ups, and even face housing insecurity to pay for child care. Read the report to learn more and to find out what considerations policymakers can take to improve the system.

Twenty of Maryland’s legislative districts have been identified as child care deserts according to Maryland Family Network (MFN) today. A child care desert is defined as a census tract with at least 50 children under age five AND greater than a 3:1 ratio of children to spots available. Garrett, Somerset and Cecil Counties have been identified as entire counties considered child care deserts.