CAPS Student Parent 2Gen Pilot Theory of Change

One in five college students, or 22 percent, are parents. They are highly motivated students and earn grades on par with or better than their childless peers. However, child care challenges often lead student parents to leave school or workforce training without completing; shift from full-time to part-time schooling or programming; and miss, arrive late to, or leave early from school or work training. In Georgia, women, single parents, parents with an annual household income under $50,000 (particularly in South Georgia, where families' median household incomes are lower), and parents under age 30 are most likely to report long-term employment or educational disruptions due to child care issues, blocking their path to fulfilling their educational goals and pursuing economic mobility. Parents' inability to access consistent, reliable, and affordable child care is one of their biggest barriers to reaching these goals. Nearly one in five applicants to the Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) program, administered through the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL), identify as students; in May 2022, CAPS established student parents as a priority group for their program. Since then, more than 16,000 student parents have applied for CAPS. Yet only 42 percent of those applicants were approved for a subsidy. DECAL established the CAPS Student Parent 2Gen Pilot program to test a strategy to better serve their student parent priority group at three technical college sites. This brief summarizes the theory of change behind DECAL's 2Gen Pilot and Child Trends' plans for evaluating the pilot. It was created in conjunction with DECAL, using funding from DECAL.