Every single day in the United States families are faced with not having affordable child care. One of the highlights of our 2018 report, The US and the High Cost of Child Care, is the regional examination that takes a critical look at this issue of equity in child care.

Imagine a world where all children start their lives with high-quality education, where all parents can go to work knowing their child is safe, where the folks doing the important work of teaching our youngest all have access to benefits and fair wages. This is far from our reality today, but this is our vision.

Massachusetts was in search of more funding for its Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) agencies after a massive cut to their budget line in 2010. Since then, CCR&Rs in the state have had to continue to do their critical work of managing cases, providing referrals and subsidies and more, despite a 16% increase in workload and decreased funding.

Child Care Aware® of America’s (CCAoA) advocacy team worked with our friends at the Massachusetts CCR&R to help them launch a new digital action center on their network website and come up with an actionable alert and email to share with their appropriate email list. Their goal was to restore the previous funding cut and bring the budget line item for CCR&R work back up to full funding.

CCAMPIS is the only federal program that supports child care services for low-income parents in college, and services are provided year-round. According to numerous studies, the number of parents attending college has grown significantly over the last 15 years and many colleges eliminated child care services, leaving parents with the burden of trying to find safe, quality care while balancing their course schedule.

It's time for a call-in day to Congress while there still time to let them know that we need to prioritize child care funding in the FY 2018 budget.

Child Care Aware® of America and Child Care Works have joined with CLASP, NWLC, NAEYC, NAFCC, NBCDI, YWCA, and ZERO TO THREE for national call-in day for child care.