Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA) welcomes guest blog post that provide essential insights and information about the child care field.

This guest blog post features a program in Johnson County, Kansas, that strengthens child care providers' emergency preparedness capabilities through planning and training supports and exercises that allow providers to test their plans.

Building off a busy legislative year in 2023, states continued to make progress in 2024 on advancing policies and investments for their child care systems. This year, states had multiple factors to juggle related to child care policy, including spending down remaining American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, developing new Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Plans for 2025-2027, and addressing new federal requirements in CCDF regulations.  

On July 31, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) introduced two bipartisan child care bills that aim to ease the burden of child care costs for families, encourage businesses to support additional child care supply, and support the child care workforce. CCAoA supports Senator Kaine and Senator Britt’s bills and applauds their bipartisan effort to strengthen the child care system.  

Families who have a child in child care, preschool, or elementary school have a regular place for their child while they work or attend school. However, there will be times when a child will get sick, and they won’t be able to attend their regular child care or school. Though inevitable, many families are faced with a last-minute decision about what to do when their child is sick hours before they must get to work or attend a class. 

Child care received $52.5 billion in temporary federal relief funding to help the sector recover and rebuild in the wake of the pandemic. Research shows that the investments have made a difference in lowering prices for families and increasing child care employment and wages, which helped stabilize the market in a time of turmoil. This funding, especially stabilization grants made available under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), gave each state an opportunity to make much-needed improvements to their child care system. States are required to spend any remaining amounts by September 2024 and, unfortunately, further federal investments have not been made. 

Currently, states are finalizing their FY 2025-2027 Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Plans. Every three years when states undergo this planning process, they must provide the public with an opportunity to comment. This must happen before submitting a final version to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) by July 1, 2024. As states release draft CCDF Plans ahead of their required public hearings, CCAoA has been monitoring how they respond to questions, especially those aligned to new policy requirements in the 2024 CCDF Final Rule.