Child Care Aware^® of America's data on the high price of child care was featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah:

USA Today

For the hundreds of thousands of low-income parents who rely on subsidized preschool services, those programs do much more than care for and educate their children. They provide nutritious meals and health screenings, resources to support housing stability and financial security.  

That, advocates argue, attests to the crucial role such programs play in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout – and why early-childhood workers should be given priority for the shots.  

Infection rates are, according to one study, highest among Native American, Black and Latino early-childhood workers, though it's unclear whether they contracted the virus in child care settings. Women of color, who are overrepresented in that workforce, are more likely to get COVID-19 than their white counterparts.  

Yet some states haven't grouped early-childhood workers with other teachers on their lists of who gets precedence for vaccination. Even in places that have technically included such workers in one of the first vaccination phases, confusion remains over how and where to make that happen.

According to the research and advocacy organization Child Care Aware of America, five states and Washington, D.C., prioritize K-12 staff over early-childhood workers for the COVID-19 vaccine. Another four states have yet to clarify when the latter group can access it. 

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Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D., CEO of Child Care Aware® of America, released the following statement in response to President-elect Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan:

“President-elect Biden’s bold plan to rescue our communities and help us fight COVID-19 is sorely needed. On the heels of dispiriting news about the growing spread of the virus and the disparate impact of the pandemic on the employment and labor force participation of women of color, we need action.

Child care is a critical part of our response to the pandemic and broader economic recovery. Child Care Aware® of America is grateful to see the President-elect’s proposal to invest $40 billion in the child care system. In conjunction with his plan’s commitment to bolster wages, provide paid leave and health care, address housing and nutrition insecurity, and pull children out of poverty – all issues that families and workers in the child care system struggle with – this rescue package would have a tremendous impact on communities across the country.

We stand ready to work with Congress and the incoming Administration on this plan and urge them to act quickly.”

The 19th

A fresh round of stimulus could help the industry regain some of its footing. Congress has allocated $10 billion in funding for child care, including $250 million for Head Start, the federal program that subsidizes early childhood education. Most of that money will go to grants for child care providers who need help paying employees and rent and making modifications to their centers to follow new coronavirus rules. 

Malik, the CAP researcher, called it a “good down-payment,” but child care providers agree that more money is needed to stabilize the industry — and thereby stabilize the economy as a whole.

Lynette Fraga, the CEO of Child Care Aware of America, an industry advocacy group, said $10 billion “is far from what the child care system needs to survive the pandemic.” The group has put the real price tag around $50 billion.

“This will only provide short-term relief,” Fraga said, “on the long road to recovery for child care.” 

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Giving Compass

By Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D.

When COVID-19 was layered onto the already fragile child care system, it shattered. Many providers remain closed or are in danger of closing, parents are struggling to find child care arrangements that will allow them to work productively, and without a reliable, steady workforce, our country will not recover economically from the pandemic-related shutdown. 

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Associated Press

“Prior to the pandemic, the child care system was fractured,” said Lynette Fraga, CEO of Child Care Aware of America. “Now, it’s shattered.”

Even before the coronavirus, many parents already faced an impossible choice — caring for their children or earning a living. But COVID-19′s impact on the system has worsened that, Fraga says, and its effects risk creating “child care deserts,” leaving parents unable to return to work, reducing incomes and taking away early education opportunities crucial for a child’s development.

The U.S. child care industry has long relied on Black and Latina women, with women of color making up 40% of its workforce, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. These women have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. A July survey from the National Association for the Education of Young Children stated half of minority-owned child care businesses expect to close permanently without additional assistance.

“The pandemic has unveiled how little access to support many of these women have,” Fraga said. “It’s exacerbated and spotlighted the inequities we’ve always known existed here.”

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