Carol Burnett Executive Director, Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative and Moore Community House

“My child-care work is where I’ve spent the last twenty years, but it is really part of a larger set of perspectives around social and economic justice that have always been very important to me.”

Carol Burnett remembers growing up in Mississippi when her elementary school was forced to integrate, and counts herself fortunate that her parents were strong supporters of civil rights. As an adult, she became one of the first women ministers of the United Methodist Church in Mississippi, then a labor organizer, and, over the last two decades, one of Mississippi’s leading advocates for quality, accessible, and affordable child care.

The Centrality of Child Care
In 1989, Carol was hired to lead Moore Community House (MCH), a community-based organization in East Biloxi related to the United Methodist Women’s Division. “Back then, MCH was doing a number of things to respond to the needs of low-income women and young children—of course child care was the biggest.” Today, MCH offers Early Head Start, pre-school education and other services including their Women in Construction program, formed to strengthen women’s economic security after Hurricane Katrina.

But delivering affordable, quality child care was easier said than done. Providers in low-income communities had difficulty paying their staff fair wages, delivering quality care and reducing waiting lists for families in need. Meanwhile, bureaucratic barriers denied parents access to what Carol calls the “single most important work support that helps low-income women move toward economic self-sufficiency.”

Barriers to Child-Care Access: Policy and Prejudice
Carol realized the challenges MCH faced were not unique: “All of the direct service providers in the state were experiencing the same set of problems.” Year after year, lawmakers refuse to allocate millions of surplus dollars to subsidize child care, and from the application process to the amount child-care centers are reimbursed, policies are punitive to parents and providers alike.

“It became clear that advocacy was needed to make change,” says Carol. So, in 1998, while remaining with MCH, Carol became the founding executive director of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative (MLICCI). MLICCI would advocate for state policy reform and strengthen the capacity of child-care centers across Mississippi—they’ve already offered assistance to over 800 providers—to deliver quality, affordable care.

Of course, this wouldn’t be an easy task anywhere—our nation has long had a difficult time assuming collective responsibility for all children’s well-being—but in a deeply conservative state with a long history of racial prejudice and antipathy towards the poor, it’s been even harder.

“We find it incredible that child care is controversial,” says Carol. “As soon as you start talking about child care as a work support that low-income families need but can’t afford, public support plummets.”

“Attitudes about race are fundamental to the reason why we have such obstructive rules,” contends Carol. “There’s a real hostile attitude toward public assistance, and the perception that the population that’s going to benefit is Black.” In Mississippi, 90 percent of children receiving child-care assistance are African American. It seems, says Carol, “the state would rather have money sit there than benefit a population that they don’t want to see benefit from anything.”

The Ms. Foundation for Women
Carol’s relationship with the Ms. Foundation began immediately after Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed Moore Community House’s buildings and decimated child-care centers along the Gulf Coast. With support from the Ms. Foundation’s Katrina Women’s Response Fund, MCH was able to rebuild and respond to the priorities of women in East Biloxi, and MLICCI successfully lobbied for the reopening of more than a third of its child-care center partners.

“What I appreciate most is how the Ms. Foundation supports our policy work with a gender lens,” says Carol. “All of the issues we confront—from how single mothers have a hard time affording child care, to a workforce that’s overwhelmingly female and underpaid—make a gender analysis central to understanding what we’re up against, and what we’re doing more strategic.”

Carol’s Vision
Carol’s vision is that one day, “families will get the services children need so that parents can work and so that children’s development will be supported at every age level beginning at birth—without regard to whether the parent can pay.” She also hopes the work will be “recognized and valued so that child-care workers—mostly women making minimum wage—are adequately compensated, supported and trained.”

While Carol wishes Mississippi was closer to realizing this vision, incremental policy wins—like getting $6 million dollars in state funds released for child care, and convincing the state to establish a grievance procedure for parents and providers—are a certain measure of progress, and a result of her own determination.