A recent statewide report highlights Santa Barbara County’s heightened response to unmet child care needs. The publicly funded services are provided at reduced or no cost based on household size and income.
The California Budget and Policy Center, a nonpartisan research nonprofit, released findings in July from a study about the state’s strategies for increasing child care access. Santa Barbara County increased enrollment in publicly funded care at the highest rate when compared to all 58 counties. Enrollment grew by 160 percent between 2021 and 2024. The county added more than 2,000 licensed spots, and many are subsidized, according to the report.
“That matters enormously here because Santa Barbara County is one of the most expensive places in California to raise a child,” Jacqui Banta said in an email interview with the Sun.
Banta is the chief operating officer of the Children’s Resource and Referral Discovery Museum (CRR), an agency that’s helped lead the charge. The progress has been made possible by collaboration, she added, with support from the county’s Education Office and the Child Care Planning Council, First 5 Santa Barbara County, the Board of Supervisors, the Santa Barbara Foundation, and more.
Partnerships with municipal planners during permitting and infrastructure investments from county supervisors also helped, Banta explained.
More than 15 new sites for infants have opened, she added, like CRR’s WINGS Infant Center in Santa Maria. The acronym stands for Where Inclusion, Nurture, and Growth Soar. It serves kids from 6 weeks to 2 years old, and the ribbon was officially cut in May this year.
In 2024, when the Santa Maria Planning Commission greenlit the project, the Sun reported that the county only had licensed space for one in 10 infants. Banta reiterated that figure again.
“There are 16,883 children ages 0 to 2 in this county and 1,457 licensed spaces for them,” Banta said.
As kids get to the preschool age, there’s licensed space for 7 in 10. School district programs help but leave a gap for younger children, so giving families a choice between different types of sites is also important.
“We support family child care homes and centers with the same seriousness because a system that only builds centers does not actually serve the families in front of us,” Banta said.
Parents may want their child cared for in a bilingual home or one with similar cultural beliefs. Home centers are often more flexible with nontraditional hours, too.
The county is two-thirds of the way toward its goal of opening 3,000 licensed child care spots by June 2030, Banta said.
“What Santa Barbara County built over the last five years can be sustained,” Banta said, “but it will take continued local investment and continued partnership.”
This article appears in August 6 – August 13, 2026.
