Through in-depth interviews with the directors or owners of licensed child care centers and licensed family child care homes, researchers at the University of Chicago and Illinois Action for Children (IAFC) captured the experiences of 76 Illinois child care providers during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report highlights how providers faced the uncertainty and challenges of the pandemic, and how they continued to provide an essential service to children and families. In this report, we discuss the programmatic changes providers made to adapt to new public health regulations and school closures and how these changes impacted their business and the children and families in their care. (author abstract)