Report finds that 35% of centers and 21% of family child care programs remain closed nationwide

Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) today released a new report and interactive website on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on child care access, affordability and quality.  

The report, titled Picking Up the Pieces: Building a Better Child Care System Post COVID-19, combines CCAoA’s annual High Price of Child Care report and State Fact Sheets for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., into one report along with additional data gathered from Child Care Resource and Referral agencies and other sources as recently as July 2020. 

The report features information about CCAoA’s new Child Care Data Center that includes additional child care data and stories for six pilot states: Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. 

Exchange Magazine

As a Mexican-American born in Arizona, I encountered racists and was subjected to racism. As a mother, I worry about my college-age son as he navigates his way in the world, including interactions with the police. As I watched George Floyd suffocate and die under the knee of a white police officer, I felt its painful pressure in my own life, and the lives of my children, parents and grandparents.

In many ways, I am the manifestation of the dreams of my grandparents—a college graduate, earning a doctorate and living her passion in her professional career. Like so many of my brothers and sisters of color, I am both deeply grateful for my family’s sacrifices and the life I have, as well as painfully aware of the subtle—and not at all subtle—ways that my skin color informs people’s interactions with me, my family and countless others.

I share this to make explicit that if we are to confront the reality of racism, implicit bias and their painful outcomes, we need to talk about them in a very personal way.

CCAoA believes that equitable early childhood education must lift up all children and support their growth and development, while providing educational advancement in partnership with families. To do so, we must acknowledge the history of our country and the disparate impact that racism, past and present, has had on generations of Black and Brown Americans. We must acknowledge the pernicious effects of historical trauma and structural racism that have resulted in cumulative adverse economic and social impacts on people of color. And we must work to ensure that our early childhood and child care systems do not perpetuate—indeed, must actively work to reverse—the racism, poverty and lack of opportunity that exists in the United States.

Read the full article

TIME

If there are mass closures across the childcare industry to the extent that experts predict, the failure of the government to act will have broader ramifications. Daycare providers who find themselves unemployed may never return to their profession. Daycare owners may abandon their businesses for more lucrative ones. Families may opt to keep a parent home to watch the kids. “Absent our collective investment in childcare, there really won’t be an effective community recovery,” warns Lynette Fraga, the CEO of ChildcareAware. “If we aren’t supporting childcare providers, there won’t be childcare to go back to.”

Read the full article.

Seattle Times

Op-ed by Jackie Bezos, president and co-founder of the Bezos Family Foundation, and Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D., CEO of Child Care Aware of America.

Read the op-ed.

FOX Business

The coronavirus pandemic has hit every part of our economy. But while we hear so often about prominent businesses or industries affected by this, what does not get talked about is how it has devastated an industry that has served as a glue keeping the other parts of our economy together -- child care.

The child care industry is on the ropes and we must move quickly to save it.

Read the full op-ed.

Exchange magazine

The coronavirus pandemic shows just how essential child care is.

Since March, many working parents across the country have scrambled to find alternative child care arrangements as schools and some child care providers closed because of the coronavirus outbreak. Those parents who were able to “work from home” struggled to balance work and being present for their young children, and less than 30 percent of workers can even work from home, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And while health care providers and other essential personnel put their lives on the line caring for others, who was taking care of their children?

Read the full article.

Fatherly.com

“Covid-19 really has devastated the childcare system,” says Mindy Bennett, Deputy Chief of Partnership of the national child care advocacy organization Child Care Aware of America. “I’ve had community leaders tell me that they suspect that about 50 percent of their childcare have closed and will not reopen,” Bennett says.

Home-based child care, also known as family child care, ranges from informal baby-sitting (ie: Aunt Kathy down the block watches the kids) to larger groups of children and professional training. Because they’re operated from homes, these services have less space than child care centers. Usually, that means groups of five to 10 children of varying ages, with siblings kept together despite age gaps.

“Family childcare is a more home-like environment,” Bennett, a former home-based care center operator, says. “It may represent your home beliefs and culture more than a center.” 

Morning Consult

In this op-ed, Mark Shriver, President of Save the Children Action Network, and Lynette Fraga, CEO of Child Care Aware of America, write:

Can America reopen without child care? The answer is no.

A survey jointly commissioned by Save the Children Action Network and Child Care Aware of America found that nearly 9 in 10 voters – 87 percent – support direct federal assistance for child care providers during the crisis so they can meet payroll and pay rent and utilities. Significantly, this support crosses party lines, with 82 percent of Republicans and 94 percent of Democrats in support.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of American voters want Congress to catch the quickly falling child care industry.

In order for Congress to sufficiently act, how many more op-eds and letters to the editor need to be published? How many more news stories need to run? How many more polls need to be conducted?

It is overwhelmingly clear. The child care industry needs help. The strength of America’s economy and the future promise of America’s children hang in the balance.

Read the full op-ed.

WDET (NPR/Detroit)

The coronavirus pandemic has put a strain on the nation’s child care system. Many providers had to close due to stay-at-home orders that kept families away. 

Press of Atlantic City

Lynette Fraga, CEO of Child Care Aware of America, said reopening child care centers and summer camps will be critical to restarting the economy in New Jersey and throughout the nation.

Her organization has a list of questions parents should ask their camps and child care providers as they reopen to ensure communication and safety, including how they will enforce social distancing and whether any COVID-19 cases have been found at the facility.

“Summer camps, just like school, frankly, during the school year, play a critical role in being a child care setting for parents when they return to work,” Fraga said. “What’s challenging, regardless of whether we name the summer care as camps or child care, is having the ability to open that care. Families are going to be very challenged, and there will be barriers for them to return to work.”

Child Care Aware is pushing for federal legislation that would increase funding for child care centers and camps. Some funding was included in the federal stimulus bill in response to COVID-19, and the state has also announced grant funding for child care centers and camps though the Department of Human Services to purchase additional cleaning products, personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves and thermometers, and other products and services to assist centers in complying with appropriate guidelines.

Read the full article.