BOSTON (SHNS) - As a task force gears up to release recommendations to boost early education and child care affordability and access, family child care providers are seeking to build awareness of their operating model and funding challenges. Early Education and Care Commissioner Amy Kershaw, who predicted the report will be published in the next month, said Tuesday that findings will delve into the family child care sector and explore how resources across state government -- including housing, workforce development and technology -- can support providers. "Family child care is such a critical part of the infrastructure," Kershaw told the News Service after a briefing on Beacon Hill. "It's a way to build economic development in a local community. It's an opportunity to support local businesses, and the agency itself has already been sort of creating new and tailored resources to family child care providers. And the task force is very interested in supporting family child care as small businesses, as entrepreneurs and as a way for other families to work." The Early Education and Child Care Task Force was created through a Gov. Maura Healey executive order last January. Kershaw called it a three-year undertaking that will continue to meet and offer recommendations.  Members are analyzing ways to bolster capacity, improve coordination across state agencies to support families in accessing care, expand workforce development efforts, and identify locations for care centers. Home-based family child care businesses are embedded in neighborhoods and offer more accessible and culturally competent programming to small groups of children, said Melinda Weber, who leads family child care work at United Way of Massachusetts Bay. Weber said educators face a bevy of challenges to opening their own businesses, including inadequate housing to host child care programs, lack of startup funding, technology knowledge gaps and unpredictable pay. Educators with unfilled slots can lose out on thousands of dollars, she said. She highlighted United Way's "Shared Services" initiative that has trained more than 2,000 providers and educators, and created 106 new businesses. Funded with public and private sources, the initiative offers licensing support, business training, and workshops on screening children for developmental delays. As United Way looks to scale its approach, Weber and her colleagues broadly called on Healey and lawmakers to provide a dedicated funding stream to ensure family child care providers can access business training, technical assistance and retirement planning services. "Essentially, we're chasing funding. There is no unified funding for these supports across the commonwealth," Weber told the News Service. The task force report will help advocates and policymakers zero in on funding needs, said Christi Staples, senior vice president of policy and government relations at United Way. "We're planting the seeds for future budgetary asks," said Staples, who acknowledged the funding appeal may not materialize this year due to the "fiscal climate." Beacon Hill has steered substantial new funding and policy incentives toward early education and child care in recent years. Revenues from the new income surtax on wealthier households have created a large new pool of money for investments across the education sector, but softening non-surtax revenues have created concerns. Weber urged the state to maintain level funding for Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) grants -- which received $475 million in the fiscal 2025 budget -- in the upcoming budget cycle. Weber called the money a "godsend," particularly in vulnerable communities where providers grapple with fluctuating enrollments. Kershaw offered no budget promises Tuesday, but she did praise the Shared Services program at United Way. "You've done something really important for the rest of us, which is learn about what you did and help share those learnings, so that those of us who are in the field -- whether it's in philanthropy, or at the city level or at the state level, or economic development -- can learn from what you have done and take those things to scale," Kershaw said at the briefing.