Child Care Aware®of America’s quality child care campaign kicks off another year today on the journey for affordable, safe, quality child care for all children. How are we doing? What markers have we achieved to date?

Congressional leaders are currently negotiating a new budget framework to avoid the fiscal cliff (i.e, the across-the-board cuts scheduled to occur on January 2 combined with the expiration of a number of tax breaks scheduled to expire later this month).  

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.