Tucked in New Mexico’s new universal child care program is a less-talked-about provision that could expand access to free child care for some of the state’s most vulnerable caregivers: grandparents.
In most cities and states, child care is designed to help support working parents, and so caregivers need to prove they are working or going to school to access subsidized care. That’s the way it had been in New Mexico until government officials started asking families across the state about their child care needs.
Again and again for the past two years, they heard from grandparents who are raising grandchildren. Because most were retired, they didn’t meet the work or school qualifications to receive any of the government assistance the state was offering. Grandparents who were finding themselves once again in the role of parent lacked the financial support or even the physical ability to provide that caregiving.
New Mexico has the highest share of children in kinship care of any state. Between 2021 and 2023, 8 percent of kids in New Mexico were being raised by grandparents or other kin, more than double the national average of 3 percent. And that percentage has been going up, according to a report from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Foundation, which supports public education and community development in seven counties and 18 tribal nations.
The state has been roiled by a substance abuse epidemic that affects about 16 percent of the adult, non-senior population. In 2021, New Mexico ranked first in alcohol deaths and sixth in drug overdose deaths, according to LANL’s report. That is a large part of the reason many grandparents are stepping in to take over children’s care. But those grandparents are also struggling financially. According to LANL, 1 in 3 are living at or below the poverty level. That’s a rate that is also almost twice the national average in a state where the average annual cost of child care is $13,500 for center-based care and $11,500 for home-based care.
The substantial share of grandparents caring for grandkids was a problem that the state was uniquely positioned to address as it formulated its new universal child care program, which launched last month with the aim of making child care free for all kids.
The way the new regulations are written, grandparents with legal custody or kinship guardianship are specifically exempt from work and school requirements, making them now newly eligible for free child care.
“We wanted grandparents to see that we see them and that we recognize they are doing hero’s work by taking care of their grandchildren,” said Elizabeth Groginsky, New Mexico’s cabinet secretary for early childhood education.
New Mexico is not the first state to give grandparents an exemption from work restrictions so they can access child care assistance — 21 states have some variation of an exemption for kinship caregivers, said Grace Reef, the president of the Early Learning Policy Group and an expert in child care policy who has analyzed all of the state exemptions.
But those exemptions are often tucked in a complicated part of the law that may make it difficult for families to understand that they even qualify. And no other state is offering anything as robust as universal care.
“New Mexico’s approach is simpler and more universally applicable to grandparents, helping reduce confusion and barriers for grandparents seeking child care access for their family,” said Anne Hedgepeth, the senior vice president of policy and research at Child Care Aware of America, a national child care advocacy organization.
Groginsky said the popularity of New Mexico’s universal program has also helped more residents become aware of the options available to them.
New Mexico became the first state to offer free child care this year, one of the most high-profile child care launches in the United States. The state had been preparing for the step over the course of years, establishing a fund in 2020 with money earmarked for early childhood education. Thanks to tax collections from the oil and gas industries, the fund has grown from $320 million to $10 billion. Latinas in New Mexico helped pass a constitutional amendment in 2022 that ensured a portion of a second state fund went specifically to universal child care.
What happens now in the state is expected to become a model for others to follow. Already, proposals for universal child care are being considered in New York and Georgia. Following New Mexico’s example, states could choose to include grandparents — nationwide, the share of grandparents caring for grandkids has been growing for the past 25 years, driven in part by the opioid epidemic.
About 916 children from grandparent-lead households received child care assistance in fiscal year 2025. In the three weeks since universal child care launched in New Mexico, 61 new grandparent-headed households have applied and been approved to receive funds.
Jovanna Archuleta, the early childhood program director at LANL, said what grandparents repeatedly expressed to them was the need for options.
(Yusuke Murata/Getty Images)
In LANL’s report, one grandparent described her day like this: “My day consist[s] of jumping out of bed, starting breakfast, getting kids up and dressed. Kids are then fed, hair and teeth brushed. Jump in the car, drop one at school at 8 and the twins at 9. Hurry home, start laundry and wash dishes and pick up. At 1:30 p.m. return to school to pick up the 5-year-olds. Get home, make lunch and do any required school work and more household chores. At 3:30 pick up 7-year-old, fix snacks, do homework, start dinner. A short bit of playtime then dinner and dishes. Then it is bath, and bedtime… By the way I am 70 and a disabled vet, and a widow.”
Caring for young children is physically and mentally demanding for anyone, and especially for older people who were not expecting to take on that caregiving responsibility again later in life, Archuleta said.
“They don’t always need every day, full-day child care because a lot of grandparents are retired, but they need respite care. They need drop-in spots and times where they can just have time for themselves. That has carried into this universal child care conversation,” she said.
Before universal child care was opened up to grandparents, some providers like Barbara Tedrow, who owns five centers in Farmington, would have grandparents come in who had just taken custody of their young grandchildren asking for a spot at the center that they typically could not afford.
“I felt so bad, so I just gave them free tuition. … They were older, and they weren’t working — they were in their 70s taking care of a 2-year-old. There was no way they could afford the tuition. So we as providers, we’re normally just letting them come for free,” Tedrow said.
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The change in the law was something providers had also been advocating for as a way to give those children, many of whom had experienced trauma, more consistency of care.
“Let this child at least stay during their core hours of their waking hours getting fed, getting nurtured, educated, playing with other children their age, and that’s what they say: ‘I’m 70. I don’t know where to go find 2-year-olds for my granddaughter to play with,’” Tedrow said.
Still, changing the regulation is a first step. For New Mexico’s program to be truly universal and accessible for grandparents — and caregivers more broadly — there needs to be child care slots for children.
Archuleta said groups like hers are working with the state to figure out how to build up that capacity, whether it’s in a center-based home-based child care program, so that every family that needs free child care and is eligible for it can actually access it.
Before New Mexico went fully universal, it had already reduced some of the eligibility criteria so that 80 percent of children were eligible for free child care. But still only about 35 percent of children under 5 who were eligible for child care assistance were actually receiving it. That could be because there were either not enough slots for those kids or because some programs chose not to accept state assistance.
The state reimburses programs for the cost of caring for each child, but because some charge more than the state reimburses, or they prefer to be paid upfront by parents, they choose not to take government assistance.
Now, families have to not only find a program that has a slot at a time when waitlists in New Mexico and across the country can be months-long, but find that slot at a program that takes government payment.
Part of the universal child care roll-out involves raising the state’s reimbursement rate and speeding up the payment process so more providers will be incentivized to participate.
But more centers and providers are still needed for families to really have ample choice — and that’s going to take time.
Already, slots in home-based child care have been falling for more than a decade nationwide. In New Mexico, from 2010 to 2025, the number of registered home-based providers fell from 4,840 to 821, according to the state. Now, New Mexico is projecting it will need to build 55 new centers and add 1,120 home-based child care options to meet the demand of its universal system. To do that, the state is offering low-interest loans from a $13 million fund to providers who want to build or expand centers, and it’s already reduced some barriers for those registering as home-based providers.
Easing the registration process for home-based providers may be the key to helping families find slots quickly, said Kate Noble, the president and CEO of Growing Up New Mexico, a state child care advocacy organization. In rural communities where there are already very few centers, home-based providers set up shop much faster. Many of those providers are also Latinx, which could be an attractive option for families looking for care that reflects their culture in a state where Latinx people make up half the population.
But that process is riddled with barriers for providers who need to obtain a fingerprint and background check and a home inspection. Those who are Spanish-speaking may be wary of going to a police station for a fingerprint or allowing inspectors into their home, said Lucy Leon, a former home-based provider in New Mexico. And the background check requirement applies not only to the provider but to every adult living in the home.
“The majority of those families, if not half, live with an uncle, a grandfather or a coworker because that’s how we support each other,” Leon said. “From the jump it’s like ‘There’s no way I’m going to do a background check for my husband, my son, and much less a coworker.’ That’s another great barrier — they don’t take that step.”
The whole process can take six months, she said.
If the state can build up the number of providers, it will then need the staff to run the expanded system. In addition to maintaining its current staffing levels, the state is projecting having to recruit at least 5,000 more educators. Part of the universal program includes higher reimbursement rates for providers that commit to paying staff at least $16 an hour.
To achieve the ramp-up to universal care, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is expected to request an additional $120 million from the state legislature next year for the program, a tall ask as states face budget shortfalls next year due to cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. Already, states across the country have been cutting their child care budgets because of those budget pressures.
It’s an ambitious plan, but if it’s designed in a way that is responsive to the true needs families have — with expansive definitions of family that considers the role grandparents play — then it can be a model that’s worth perfecting, said Natalie Renew, the executive director of Home Grown, a national group working to expand home-based care access.
“If we are going to invest a huge amount of money into a universal child care system, let’s hold an ambitious goal for what it delivers to families,” Renew said. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy, but I think it is possible, and I really want the sector to be in this problem solving mode with them — what do you need to figure this out?”
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