Program Overview
In 2025, King County launched the Best Starts for Kids Wage Boost Pilot — a $30 million voter-approved investment in the child care workforce — to model how government investment can support the child care workforce. This groundbreaking effort provides quarterly cash payments to early learning and school-age care providers across the county, reaching those who are among the most underpaid workers and who are essential to the local economy.
The initiative is funding $24 million in direct compensation through 2027, alongside additional investment for technical infrastructure and research. An estimated 1,400 child care workers are expected to participate. Eligible staff in centers, family child care homes, and school-age programs receive quarterly wage boosts for as long as they remain in the Pilot. From the beginning, the Pilot has been shaped by input from workers, families, advocates, and child care facilities —ensuring the design reflects the lived realities of those closest to the work.
“We believe the solution is public investment. And we wanted to build a pilot that models what’s possible—and worth fighting for.”
—Kalayaan Domingo, Program Manager, Best Starts for Kids Childcare Wage Boost Project, King County DCHS
“From the beginning, the design team was thinking about: What will have the most impact for the people doing this work? What cadence of payments makes sense? What will actually help them stay in the field?”
—Pauli Owen, Senior Director of Programs, Imagine Institute
The Pilot is funded through King County’s voter-approved Best Starts for Kids property tax levy. It is being implemented in partnership with the Imagine Institute, a trusted workforce intermediary with deep ties to child care providers; AidKit, a technology platform purpose-built for equitable aid delivery; and Uncommon Bridges, a consulting group that facilitates collaboration between community stakeholders and Pilot partners to inform implementation and design.
The Pilot is being independently evaluated by the Urban Institute, a national research organization that conducts policy-focused program evaluations, and Cardea Services, a nonprofit that provides evaluation and strategy services to strengthen public health and social programs. Together, they are assessing both the Pilot’s outcomes and its implementation process to inform future public investment strategies.
Partnership Wins: How King County Used AidKit to Deliver Equity at Scale
1. A Complex Lottery, Operationalized with Equity and Clarity
To promote equitable access across King County’s diverse geographies and child care modalities, the program uses a weighted lottery that accounts for:
- Council district geographic representation
- Type of care: family home, center-based, or school-age
As the program’s third-party administrator, AidKit translated this complex allocation logic into a randomized selection process that is transparent, fair, and fully auditable. AidKit manages the backend operations, ensuring that neither King County nor the Imagine Institute is involved in making selection decisions.
“We didn’t want any bias—or even the perception of bias. Having a third party like AidKit manage the lottery was essential.”
—Kalayaan Domingo
2. Flexible Payments, Designed with Worker Voice
Facilities selected through the lottery are invited to participate, and then all eligible staff at those facilities can choose to opt in. Workers enroll directly through AidKit’s platform and receive payments from the County - not from their employer. This design preserves worker autonomy and prevents facilities from having to manage funds on behalf of staff.
Payments range from $4,000–$8,320 per worker over the course of a year. Verification is streamlined through quarterly self-attestation by workers and confirmation by facility representatives.
“We wanted to make this process easy for both facilities and workers. AidKit helped us design around what real people actually experience.”
—Kalayaan Domingo
“There was so much collaboration around making it simple—from the enrollment flow to the payment cadence. We didn’t want people to feel like this was one more complicated system to figure out.”
—Pauli Owen
3. Inclusive Access, Online and Offline
The application is mobile-first and multilingual. The Imagine Institute, with deep expertise in the child care field and trusted relationships, leads WhatsApp and SMS outreach, hosts info sessions, and has made over 2,100 phone calls to ensure facilities knew about the program, understood how it worked, and were able to access it. Spanish-language radio and local media further help spread the word.
The Imagine Institute’s outreach included multiple waves of personalized support: initial calls to inform licensed facilities about the application process, follow-up calls to help selected facilities complete worker rosters, and final reminder calls to individual workers nearing their enrollment deadline. This layered strategy ensured strong participation across care types and language groups—especially among family child care providers, who often face barriers accessing traditional public programs.
“There was so much intentionality in how the tool was designed. It was accessible and easy to use—but in a relationship-based field like early learning, you still need trusted people to help some folks feel confident using it.”
—Pauli Owen
“We actually did quite a bit of outreach. Best Starts for Kids and King County have more organizational relationships, and the Imagine Institute has relationships and contact information for individuals. So we really had a pretty strong distribution.”
—Kalayaan Domingo
“Family home providers are one person doing it all. Imagine Institute’s relationships and AidKit’s accessibility helped us get to them.”
—Kalayaan Domingo
Pilot Impact
Though still in its first year, the Pilot has already achieved:
- 2,000+ facility applications received
- High participation from family home providers, a group often underrepresented in public programs
- Fast turnaround: Workers received payment within 1.79 days of enrollment on average; facility representatives within 2.74 days of submission
- $4,000–$8,320 in wage boosts per eligible worker, across hundreds of facilities
- Real-time dashboards support internal tracking and program responsiveness
“The dashboard helped us see where we weren’t meeting geographic or provider-type targets. That visibility helped us respond in real time.”
—Pauli Owen
“Being able to pull outreach lists, filter by language, and track who needed support—it made targeted follow-up so much easier. The dashboards gave us exactly what we needed to do the work.”
—Pauli Owen
The program is currently being evaluated by Urban Institute, in partnership with Cardea Services, to assess both impact and implementation. The study includes focus groups, surveys, and interviews, with an explicit focus on racial equity, workforce retention, and systems learning. A baseline workforce survey is already complete, with a public-facing update expected in fall 2025.
“This isn’t just a relief program—it’s a way for us to learn what works, build political will, and push toward permanent change.”
—Kalayaan Domingo
The Bigger Picture: Building Toward Increased Public Investment
The Best Starts Child Care Wage Boost Pilot isn’t just a benefit program—it’s a strategic demonstration of how local governments can invest in care work with dignity, equity, and accountability. It shows what’s possible when flexible public funding is paired with human-centered technology, trusted community intermediaries, and transparent systems for learning.
“No matter how well you build something, there’s a human element you can’t leave out. This is a relationship-based industry. That has to be part of the design.”
—Pauli Owen
“This model could be a game changer. If other areas can fund it, they’ll have a blueprint to draw from—and we can start to change what the early learning profession looks like.”
—Pauli Owen
The Pilot is already proving that:
- Cash support can be delivered equitably at scale when infrastructure is designed with the end user in mind.
- Cross-sector collaboration—between government, technologists, and provider-facing organizations—is essential for reaching and supporting a diverse set of workers.
- Real-time feedback and rigorous evaluation can strengthen implementation and build the case for long-term policy change.
“King County was really intentional about creating a blueprint. If another county or city wants to do this, they’ll have something to build on.”
—Pauli Owen
By centering worker voice, removing administrative burden, and grounding design in equity, the Wage Boost Pilot offers a replicable blueprint for strengthening the child care workforce—and rethinking how public systems value essential labor.
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