Child Care Aware® of America is partnering with Parents magazine to urge Congress to focus on the child care crisis. Click here to see the article in the December issue of Parents. The federal law that allocates funds to states for child care is the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). It has very few rules to ensure that children are safe in child care and that the settings that children are in promote their healthy development. The law has not been updated since 1996.

If you’re a parent with a young child in child care, chances are you’ve had a call to pick up your child due to some type of illness. Nearly 11 million children under age six are in some type of child care every week. As every parent knows, colds happen. Other illnesses happen too, but recognizing when a child should be excluded from child care and when it’s okay for them to stay in group care, varies by state and by program.

Last week in Washington, D.C., David Gray and Lisa Guernsey from the New America Foundation’s Workforce and Family Program and Early Education Initiative, led a panel discussion entitled, “Speaking Up: What the Presidential Candidates Should be Saying about Child Care and Early Learning.”

In August, Child Care Aware® of America released Parents and the High Cost of Child Care: 2012 Report, which presents 2011 data about the price parents pay for full-time child care in each state.

Avonda Fox of Texas suffered a horrific loss when her 4-year-old son, Jacob, died due to negligence by a child care center. Jacob was left in a van for an unknown period of time in 103 degree heat. To elude police of guilt, Jacob’s body was placed at a local park. When the child care provider was arrested, her fingerprints were taken and Fox learned that the woman caring for her children had an extensive criminal history, including assault and an arrest for theft. Not only did the director have a criminal record, but many of the other employees did as well.

How important is it that child care providers have a background check? On August 1, the Washington State Auditor's Office released a report, "Protecting Children from Sex Offenders in Child Care, Foster Care, and Schools." They conducted an audit within the state to determine if matching the state's sex offender registry to information on child care and foster care providers and school employees would reveal results similar to Inspector General reports in other states like Illinois and Kentucky.