Holmes County family heads to Statehouse to advocate for young children

Ashley and her Holmes County family will head to the Ohio Statehouse West Lawn in Columbus on Wednesday, May 27, to join 100 families from across Ohio in pressing state policymakers on early-childhood policy.

The event, Family Voices at the Statehouse, is being organized by Groundwork Ohio and is built around joy, storytelling and collective action. Families with young children are being asked to meet directly with lawmakers and staff about what it takes to raise Ohio’s youngest children, a conversation that carries clear weight for Holmes County parents trying to balance work, child care and family budgets.

At the center of the advocacy push are several budget requests tied to Ohio’s fiscal 2026-27 spending plan. Groundwork Ohio wants lawmakers to restore publicly funded child care eligibility to 160% of the federal poverty level, restore funding for the Child Care Choice Voucher program, and restore the proposed refundable child tax credit of up to $1,000 per child under age 7. The organization has also pointed to child care, Medicaid as a lifeline for families, and the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant as core priorities.

For Holmes County families, those decisions reach beyond Columbus budget tables. Restoring child care eligibility would affect whether more working parents can qualify for help. Voucher funding would determine whether families can find an opening they can actually afford. A refundable child tax credit would give parents of young children another way to cover the cost of diapers, formula, and daily care.

Groundwork Ohio describes itself as a nonpartisan advocacy organization focused on children from birth through age 5 and their families. Holmes County appears in the group’s county data resources, which are designed to show the local state of young children and families and connect county-level experience to statewide policy debates.

The organization has used family storytelling before to draw crowds and shape legislative conversations. At the launch of its Family Action Network, roughly 700 Ohioans, including parents, grandparents, foster parents, kinship caregivers, young children, community partners and policymakers, gathered at the Capitol Atrium to share stories with state legislators.

Now Ashley and other Holmes County parents are set to bring those same concerns back to the Statehouse lawn. On May 27, their stories will land in the middle of Ohio’s budget fight, where the choices made in Columbus will decide how much help young families can count on in the year ahead.