In many U.S. communities, child care is reaching a dire inflection point. Daycares are struggling to stay financially afloat. Parents are struggling to pay or find child care. And government aid programs are limited in scope and many are expiring.

In Michigan, we used state Freedom of Information Act requests and a first-of-its-kind data analysis of child care records, to find that the number of so-called “day care deserts” was nearly double previous official estimates. A total of 20 counties had so few child care options that they qualify as deserts, the data shows. Another 23 Michigan counties, including Detroit’s Wayne and Macomb counties, are rounding errors away from qualifying as deserts as well.

After seeing our new data, Michigan’s Early Childhood Investment Corp. a public organization that contracts with the state to help run the child care system, said that it didn’t know the original child care desert figure was flawed. It said the original numbers were calculated using the best available data at that time.

Based on the new, larger numbers, “it’s clear that families do not have access to child care to meet their needs,” the ECIC said in a statement.

We also invited Michiganders to tell us about their experiences on both sides of the child care industry — as a parent trying to find care for their child or as a provider trying to stay in business. We received more than 170 responses, many of which included detailed policy proposals. We wrote about eight of those proposals.

In September, Michigan’s child care licensing bureau started a new initiative, Our Strong Start, which pairs child care entrepreneurs with a staffer from the state licensing agency who helps with paperwork and obtaining inspections. The program sought to address problems raised in our reporting. Hundreds of new day care providers are now enrolled in the program.

And a few months later, Michigan changed how it determines what constitutes a “child care desert,” employing our new data analysis on their state dashboard.