Care.com 2026 Update: New Owner, Same Problems — What Parents Need to Know

Photo by Gustavo Fring

If you've been following our coverage of Care.com here at TheViparolaz.com, you already know we've never been shy about our concerns with the platform. Back in 2023, we wrote about The Problems With Care.com, covering the platform's shift to paid memberships, its inaccurate nanny wage calculator, and the fine print buried in its background check disclaimers. Then in April 2025, we asked a pointed question in Care.com's Move to Texas: A Strategic Shift or an Escape from Regulation?, after the company relocated its headquarters out of Massachusetts, a state with some of the strictest childcare oversight in the country, and into Texas, where the rules are considerably looser. We wondered out loud whether that move was about cutting costs or about putting distance between the company and the kind of regulatory accountability Massachusetts demands. A year later, we finally have an answer worth sitting with.

Care.com has a new owner. It was sold at a substantial financial loss. The new buyer, a private equity firm, has walked into a company carrying years of regulatory baggage, unresolved safety criticisms, and a brand reputation that has taken serious hits. And near Sacramento, California, a recent child abuse case involving a nanny who advertised on multiple childcare apps, including Care.com itself, is a fresh, painful reminder of what's at stake when vetting is inadequate. Let's break it all down.

Care.com Has Been Sold at a $180 Million Loss

In March 2026, IAC Inc., the New York-based holding company that owned Care.com, completed the sale of the platform to Pacific Avenue Capital Partners, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $320 million. That number sounds large until you remember what IAC originally paid for Care.com: $500 million, when it acquired the company in 2020. Do the math, and IAC's exit from Care.com represents a loss of roughly $180 million in six years.

Why would IAC take that kind of financial hit? Because Care.com's performance under IAC's ownership was, by most financial measures, deteriorating. Consumer revenue was declining quarter over quarter. The platform had been the subject of an $8.5 million FTC settlement in 2024 over deceptive practices. Regulatory scrutiny was intensifying. And the brand, which was once synonymous with the convenience of finding childcare online, had accumulated enough negative press that families were increasingly skeptical.

IAC's own financial communications acknowledged the reality. The company had been signaling for some time that it wanted to "sharpen its strategic focus" around other holdings, which was corporate-speak for acknowledging that Care.com was a problem it wanted to divest. The sale went through on March 16, 2026.

For families, the practical implication is this: Care.com is now the property of a private equity firm whose explicit goal, as stated publicly, is "corporate carve-outs to acquire market-leading businesses with strong fundamentals and clear opportunities for value creation." Translation: they bought it to fix it up and eventually sell it for more than they paid. The focus, at least in the near term, will be on financial performance and operational efficiency. That isn't necessarily bad, but it is worth noting that "value creation" in private equity terms doesn't automatically mean better child safety outcomes for families.

Who Is Pacific Avenue Capital Partners?

Pacific Avenue Capital Partners is a Los Angeles-based private equity firm that focuses on what it calls "corporate carve-outs and middle market transactions." The firm manages approximately $3.8 billion in assets as of late 2025, and the Care.com acquisition represents the first investment from its Pacific Avenue Fund II.

The firm's founder and managing partner, Chris Sznewajs, described the Care.com deal as squarely aligned with the firm's strategy, acquiring what it characterized as a "market-leading business" with opportunities to drive operational performance. Brad Wilson, who remained as Care.com's CEO through the transition, echoed the expected messaging about focusing on families and caregivers while expanding employer solutions.

What Pacific Avenue has not done, at least publicly, is announce any specific new initiatives around caregiver vetting, background check methodology, or safety improvements. The transition announcement was framed primarily in financial and strategic terms. The Care.com website continues to operate as it did before the acquisition. The same background check limitations that existed under IAC's ownership exist today.

This is perhaps the most important thing for parents to understand: a change in corporate ownership does not automatically translate to changes in how a platform operates on a day-to-day basis. The infrastructure, the product design, the vetting systems, these things take time and intentional investment to change. And when a private equity firm acquires a company specifically for its financial turnaround potential, safety enhancements compete with cost reduction for resources and attention.

We hope we're wrong. We genuinely hope Pacific Avenue's ownership proves to be transformative for Care.com's safety record. But as advocates for child safety, we'd be doing parents a disservice if we said "new owner, fresh start" without acknowledging that nothing substantive has changed yet.

The Regulatory Baggage Pacific Avenue Bought

To understand what Pacific Avenue actually acquired, it helps to review the timeline of Care.com's regulatory and legal problems. The new owners didn't just buy a platform. They bought a history. The problems at Care.com are not new, and they are not isolated incidents. They represent a consistent pattern across years and multiple ownership eras.

As far back as 2015, investigative reporting by the Boston Globe exposed how Care.com allowed a nanny with dozens of prior larceny and fraud convictions, a woman who had served jail time, to register on the platform and be hired by a Boston family. The family lost $285,000 to theft before realizing the caregiver's true background. Care.com's background check, which the family had paid for, failed to surface the woman's extensive criminal record.

The platform's defenders argued that it was a marketplace, not an employer, and that connecting families with caregivers didn't make it responsible for those caregivers' conduct. Courts and regulators have repeatedly pushed back on that framing.

In 2020, Care.com paid $1 million to settle allegations brought by California prosecutors over misrepresented background checks. The platform had claimed its background checks were more comprehensive than they actually were.

Then in August 2024, the FTC filed a federal complaint that cut to the heart of Care.com's practices. The settlement, $8.5 million, the largest the FTC has pursued against a consumer marketplace of this type, involved findings that the platform misled families into believing caregivers had undergone rigorous background checks when many individuals with criminal histories had been approved. The FTC also found that the platform inflated job numbers to attract caregivers who paid subscription fees, and used what regulators described as "dark patterns" to make it extremely difficult for subscribers to cancel their memberships.

The FTC's own language in the complaint is striking. It stated that Care.com "misled consumers into believing that caregivers on its platform had undergone rigorous background checks, when in reality, many individuals with criminal histories were approved." That is not a technicality or a minor procedural issue. That is a direct and documented failure that put children at risk.

Care.com, for its part, disputed the FTC's characterization and settled without admitting wrongdoing, which is standard practice in regulatory settlements. But the documented pattern speaks for itself: the platform's vetting has consistently failed to meet the standard families were led to believe they were getting. Pacific Avenue Capital Partners has now assumed ownership of a company with that record.

The Sacramento-Area Case: A Stark Reminder of What's at Stake, and It Gets Worse

Amid all the corporate maneuvering and regulatory history, it's easy to lose sight of why this matters. A March 2026 case from the Sacramento area brought that back into devastating focus, and the developments since our initial reporting make this case even more important for parents to understand.

In Lincoln, California, a community northeast of Sacramento, a nanny was arrested on felony child abuse and corporal injury charges after a landscaper at a local park witnessed and recorded her allegedly abusing a 22-month-old toddler in her care. According to the child's parents, the nanny pushed the toddler down a slide with significant force, struck her, and slapped her during a diaper change. The child sustained visible injuries consistent with the reported assault.

This is now confirmed: the family hired the nanny directly through Care.com. The parents have gone on record stating they used the platform specifically because they believed it provided safety safeguards. As the child's father put it, "Utilizing a website like care.com, we thought certain precautions and procedures would have been put in place to negate these types of situations." The nanny had been working for the family for several months at the time of the incident.

Care.com's official response. Following the incident, Care.com issued a statement saying it was "deeply saddened" and confirmed that the caregiver "completed all required screenings and had no prior reported incidents on our platform." The company stated her account has been closed and that it is cooperating with law enforcement. Care.com's statement emphasized that caregivers are required to complete an annual background check before being granted contact with families.

This response is worth sitting with for a moment, because it illustrates exactly the gap we've been documenting throughout this article. The caregiver passed Care.com's background check. She had no flagged incidents on the platform. And yet, according to subsequent reporting, police are now re-examining a 2023 case in which another child was injured while in her care. If that earlier incident had been investigated or substantiated at the time, it raises serious questions about whether Care.com's annual screening process would have caught it, given that even a clean background check evidently wasn't sufficient to catch a pattern that may have existed for years.

Police also confirmed that the nanny had advertised her services across multiple platforms beyond Care.com, and investigators believe she may have provided childcare to other families who have not yet come forward. The family has publicly asked anyone with experience with this caregiver to contact them or the Lincoln Police Department's Investigations Division.

The case has moved through the legal system. The caregiver was arraigned in Placer County Superior Court on April 27, 2026, and pleaded not guilty to felony child abuse and corporal injury to a child. She posted bail and was released, but the court imposed significant supervision conditions: GPS monitoring, regular check-ins with the Probation Department, a prohibition on working in professional childcare services, and notably, a specific court order prohibiting her from contacting the Care.com website. The case remains open as of this writing.

That last detail is telling. A court found it necessary to specifically bar this individual from a platform that had, just weeks earlier, approved her, hosted her profile, and connected her with at least one family.

This is the fundamental problem with platforms that allow caregivers to self-register and pass a single annual screening that families are told to trust completely. A clean background check is not the same as a complete history. The only real protection is thorough, independent, ongoing vetting on the family's part, and as we've documented throughout this article, platform-provided checks have repeatedly proven insufficient to catch the cases that matter most.

This Isn't an Isolated Pattern: Other Courts Have Seen It Too

The Lincoln case is disturbing on its own, but it isn't unique. A December 2025 ruling from the Illinois Appellate Court involving Care.com reveals an almost identical pattern playing out in a different state, with even more severe consequences.

In that case, a family hired a nanny through Care.com's CareCheck background check process. According to the court record, shortly after beginning work, the caregiver allegedly squeezed or shook the family's infant son with enough force to break eight of his ribs. (The caregiver has denied causing the injuries.) The family's lawsuit alleged that an attorney involved in a related investigation for the Cook County Public Guardian's office had information indicating the caregiver had a documented history of prior child abuse and neglect, information that, according to the family's claims, was not disclosed to them for nearly a year.

The appellate court's ruling is worth understanding because of what it reveals about how these platforms structure their own legal exposure. The court noted that Care.com's own marketing language promises that "all caregivers are background-checked through our CareCheck process before they are able to interact" with families, and that the company markets itself around the safety and thoroughness of this screening. Yet the court also pointed to Care.com's own website disclaimers, which state that background checks are "not always 100% accurate," may not reveal a complete criminal or sex offender history, and explicitly warn that more thorough background checks are something families need to pursue separately if they choose to.

In other words, the same sentence on a Care.com profile that reassures a parent ("background-checked") is paired, elsewhere on the platform, with a legal disclaimer acknowledging the check may have missed exactly the kind of history that matters most. Care.com's own Safety Center confirms this directly, stating plainly that background checks are subject to reporting limitations, are not always 100% accurate, and may not reveal a person's complete criminal or sex offender history.

Two documented cases, in two different states, involving two different families, both connected through Care.com, both involving caregivers who passed the platform's screening and went on to allegedly injure infants or toddlers in their care. This is not bad luck. This is a pattern that mirrors exactly what the FTC's 2024 complaint described, and exactly what we warned about in our companion article on how to properly vet a caregiver.

What Has Actually Changed at Care.com?

In fairness, some changes have been made to Care.com's operations in recent years, some voluntarily, some required by the FTC settlement.

Under the terms of the 2024 FTC settlement, Care.com is required to only post jobs that caregivers can actually be hired for, must back any earnings claims with actual evidence, and must provide straightforward cancellation methods for subscriptions. These are meaningful improvements to the transparency and fairness of the platform, but they primarily address the financial and contractual relationship between Care.com and its subscribers, not the underlying safety concerns about caregiver vetting.

The platform has also made some surface-level changes to how it presents background check information. But the fundamental architecture remains: Care.com is a marketplace where caregivers self-register, the platform offers name-based database searches as an add-on service, and families are ultimately responsible for deciding how much additional vetting to do on their own.

The platform relocated its headquarters from Austin to Dallas in March 2025, framing it as "ushering in the company's next phase of growth." A headquarters move is a real estate decision. It doesn't change the product or the vetting process.

Under Pacific Avenue's ownership, there have been no public announcements about changes to the caregiver screening methodology. The CEO has spoken about supporting families and expanding employer solutions, which suggests the near-term focus is on Care.com's business-to-business offerings (helping employers provide childcare benefits to employees), not necessarily on improving individual consumer safety.

So, Should You Use Care.com?

This is the question that matters to parents, and I want to give you an honest answer rather than a reflexive one.

Care.com can be a useful tool for finding potential caregiver candidates. It has a large network, search filters that help you identify candidates with relevant experience, and review systems that provide some insight into candidates' histories. If you're starting a search for a nanny or babysitter and don't know where to begin, the platform can generate a pool of potential candidates.

But it should never be the end of your vetting process.

Not under the old ownership.

Not under the new one.

The background check badge you see on a Care.com profile is not a clearance. It is not a guarantee. It does not mean the person in front of you has been vetted to the standard your child deserves. It means a name-based search of limited databases came back without a hit, and as we've documented, that process has missed people with serious criminal histories on multiple documented occasions.

Use Care.com as a discovery tool if you choose. Then do your own comprehensive background check. In California, that means TrustLine fingerprint-based screening. Nationally, it means county-level criminal records searches, Child Abuse Registry checks, federal records checks, sex offender registry verification, and thorough, phone-based reference calls. It means asking the candidate directly about their history. It means trusting your instincts when something feels off. New ownership doesn't erase old patterns. Corporate rebranding doesn't make children safer. Only genuine, thorough vetting does that.

What We're Watching

We're not going to turn this into a courtroom tracker. Following two individual legal cases play by play isn't our focus, and it's not the most useful thing we can do for you as readers. What we will keep watching is Care.com itself: whether the company makes any structural changes to its CareCheck process or vetting methodology, whether Pacific Avenue announces specific safety improvements now that the acquisition has closed, or whether bigger news breaks that changes the picture for families using the platform.

If any of that happens, we'll be back with another update. In the meantime, don't let a change in corporate ownership, or a "background-checked" badge, convince you that Care.com's safety concerns are resolved. As of this writing, nothing about how the platform actually vets caregivers has changed.

If navigating Care.com, vetting a caregiver, or figuring out your childcare options altogether has you feeling overwhelmed, you don't have to sort it out alone. As a mom and a childcare professional, I help families build a plan that actually fits their needs, not a one-size-fits-all answer pulled from a website. If you need help, don't hesitate to reach out and book time with me.