Early care and education (ECE) programs can provide a lifetime of benefits to children and families, but a lack of public support leaves these valuable services vulnerable to collapse during economic downturns. The COVID-19 pandemic was a particularly intense emergency for ECE providers: closures due to illness or shelter-in-place ordinances immediately slashed their revenues, and reduced group sizes prohibited a return to normalcy. In California, the ECE sector found itself on the brink of collapse within months, with many programs taking losses or doubling down on debt in order to stay open. On average, emergency regulations designed to ensure safe child care operations increased operating costs by 47 percent for centers and by 70 percent for family child care (FCC) providers. Federal relief funding helped to attenuate the disaster by stabilizing child care businesses. In this report, the authors explore the impacts of COVID-19 on child care businesses and the role of pandemic relief funding from 2021 to 2023, covering a period when the state received its largest share of federally allocated funds.