Parents still face rising costs while providers struggle to stay in business 

ARLINGTON, VA, January 25, 2022 – Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) today released The Year in Child Care: 2021 Data, Analysis and Recommendations, the final installment in the organization’s Catalyzing Growth: Using Data to Change Child Care series. This report highlights parent and provider experiences and further illustrates the gap between what families can afford to pay and what providers must charge to scrape by.  

The report is a comprehensive look at the child care system’s recent challenges and opportunities, giving readers a fuller picture of child care affordability by comparing child care prices to median household income by both marital status and race/ethnicity.  

“While the cost of child care remains out of reach for many families in this country, providers are still struggling to stay in business,” shares Michelle McCready, CCAoA’s interim chief executive officer. “As providers prepare to lose COVID-era relief funds, this sector’s need for robust, long-term public support becomes more urgent by the day.”  

ARLINGTON, VA, December 13, 2022 – Michelle McCready was named Interim Chief Executive Officer of Child Care Aware® of America by the CCAoA Board of Directors effective January 12, 2023. CCAoA CEO Dr. Lynette M. Fraga announced in August that she is stepping down effective January 11, 2023.  

A mom of three, Alicia Fout was going to college and working 30 hours a week but still often struggled to cover the cost of child care.

The high price tag forced her to prioritize which monthly bills to pay, which meant frequent utility shut-off notices – and some extremely difficult decisions.

“I learned which bills I could forgo every other month to keep up with the financial needs of my children,” Fout told CNN. 

State Legislature Roundup: Some Wins, but More Support for Child Care is Needed | Exchange Press 

States and local communities play a significant role in shaping the policies that determine child care access for families and the quality of available care. This article explores legislation that state and local governments enacted in 2022 to support child care and early learning. These actions are especially important, as the last available federal funding, which has allowed states to implement temporary child care policies, is set to run out by September 24. 

As states spend down their relief funding over the next year, it will be critical to keep advocating for child care and early learning policies at the state level. While some legislative actions have been big policy wins for families, providers, and children, not every state has made bold reforms for child care and early learning. That leaves a patch-work of early learning access across the country. In 2023, we must make child care investments a priority in all state houses and at the federal level.

Follow Lynette Fraga on Twitter @lynette_fraga and Child Care Aware of America @ChildCareAware

Read the full article. 

Child Care in 2021 Was More Expensive than Other Household Expenses 

Such as Housing and Health Care 

ARLINGTON, VA, October 13, 2022 — Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) today released Price of Care: 2021 Child Care Affordability, which outlines the continuing increases in the price of child care across the United States. 

The report highlights survey data that shows that child care prices outpaced inflation in 2021 for the third consecutive year. In 2021, the average annual inflation rate was higher than usual at 4.7%, but child care prices rose by an average of 5% when compared to 2020 prices. This means families with children were more likely to struggle to afford child care on top of essentials such as food, housing and transportation. 

“Parents continue to face the challenge of finding and affording high-quality child care,” said Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D., CCAoA Chief Executive Officer. “Recent public investments in child care have been a lifeline and helped keep programs open. But robust, long-term public support is needed to make child care affordable for families and ensure more children have access to high-quality early learning experiences to prepare them for success in school and beyond.”   

Vox

On the Senate floor in early August, just two days before lawmakers voted to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, four senior Democrats came out to lament what they believed to be the bill’s biggest omission: child care.

“We cannot simply vote on this package and call it a day,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said. “Our child care system isn’t just stretched thin; it is broken.”

Less than two months later, the extent of that brokenness is clearer than ever. Public schools are fully reopened, and most pandemic-era restrictions are relaxed. But working conditions for families with kids who need child care are not back to normal. For both workers and parents, already-grim trends in child care have only gotten worse since the pandemic began: program costs have increased, while waiting lists in several states number in the tens of thousands.

ARLINGTON, VA, September 14, 2022 — Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) today released the first report of our research series: Catalyzing Growth: Using Data to Change Child Care. The report, Annual Child Care Landscape Analysis: 2021 Supply and Quality Trends, provides detailed information about the child care system in the United States. 

This year, CCAoA is featuring longitudinal supply data to increase understanding of how the supply of child care has changed since 2019, prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nationally, CCAoA found that while there was an increase in the number of child care centers from 2020 to 2021, the total number of centers remains slightly lower than the number open in 2019.   

There continues to be a downward trend in the supply of licensed Family Child Care (FCC) homes. Among the 40 states for which CCAoA has complete data, we found a 10% decrease in FCC homes over the last three years (107,783 in 2019 to 97,393 in 2021). Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply of FCC homes was decreasing. This is an alarming trend because FCC homes are an affordable option for many families and often the only choice for families, especially in rural communities.