Tell Congress to Stop the Child Care Crisis

From the Coalition on Human Needs (http://www.chn.org):

High-quality child care plays a crucial role in supporting children’s healthy development, learning, and school readiness, while also supporting parents’ ability to work, train, or pursue an education.

Sadly, too many families struggle to find and afford high-quality care that meets their needs, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these challenges.

Prior to the pandemic, the two largest programs, the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and Head Start served just a fraction of eligible families—less than 1 in 7 eligible families received a subsidy under CCDBG, and just over 1 in 3 and 1 in 10 eligible children had access to Head Start and Early Head Start’s comprehensive services, respectively.

The long-awaited relief provided in the American Rescue Plan has been essential to the child care sector, but it does not diminish the need for increased funding for federal child care and early learning programs.

Write to your members of Congress today at https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-invest-in-child-care-and-early-education and tell them to stop the child care crisis.

We’re joining our allies in demanding Congress make the following investments:

• An additional $6.17 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) (a total of $12.3 billion), which will support states in making targeted investments to their child care systems aligned with longer-term recovery needs.
• An additional $4.4 billion for Head Start (a total of $15.4 billion). Specifically, $1 billion for expansion of Early Head Start and Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships, $596 million to sustain the workforce through a cost-of-living adjustment, $2.5 billion for workforce compensation realignment, $262 million to provide flexibility to address local quality improvement priorities, including facilities, and $10 million to help develop the most effective and appropriate staff for American Indian/Alaska Native programs.
• An additional $435.7 million for early intervention services provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and $105 million for preschool special education services.
• An additional $210 million for the Preschool Development Grants Birth through Five (a total of $500 million) to support states’ and territories’ efforts to increase the quality and efficiency of existing early learning programs and systems.

Young people are the future of our society and if we don’t make up for lost ground, societal, racial and income gaps are only going to increase.

Click here to write a letter to your senators and representative urging them to make critical investments in child care and Pre-K in the must-pass end-of-year spending bill.