Advocacy News – Aug. 6, 2025
What happened: The Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP) recently announced an expansion of the innovative MI Tri-Share Child Care Program to help make childcare more affordable and accessible for working families.
Why it matters: The program, which splits childcare costs equally between the employee, employer and the state, will now have facilitator hubs across 24 regions, making it available in all 83 Michigan counties. This expansion aims to ease the financial burden on families and help employers retain talent by addressing a key barrier to employability: childcare.
- The state reports that more than 250 Michigan employers currently participate in MI Tri-Share, serving over 800 families and nearly 1,000 children statewide, resulting in total family savings of over $8.6 million in child care costs since its inception.
Go deeper: Sign up or read more about the Tri-Share program for employers.
- Catch the Michigan Chamber and partners MI Untapped Potential report, which studied the impact Michigan’s lack of accessible and affordable childcare has had on our state’s working parents, job providers and economy.