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. 

Read the full article.

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.” 

Read the full article.

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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Fatherly

So what do working parents really need? We rounded up six experts all of whom have different expertise about the needs of working parents, and asked each of them just that. Answers ranged from far-reaching policy changes to simple respites from the grind of working from a home filled with stir-crazy children. Here’s what they said.

Working Parents Need a Working Child Care System

America’s childcare system was in tatters before COVID. The U.S. spends less than 0.5 percent of our GDP on child care, far less than most industrialized countries. American child care funding relies on a patchwork of funding sources, often overburdening parents and keeping quality care inaccessible for low income families. The number of child care providers fell short of the demand for child care before the pandemic and dwindled further as centers shuttered under lockdown. Child Care Aware of America CEO Lynette M. Fraga says America urgently needs to repair its broken child care system.

Read the full article.

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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Spokane Spokesman-Review

Op-ed by Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D., CEO of Child Care Aware of America, and Deeann Puffert, CEO of Child Care Aware of Washington.

This is a critical time for our economy. It is also a critical time for the most important workforce support of all – child care. Parents cannot work, no matter how essential they are, if they do not have child care for their children. Earlier this spring, nearly 6% of Washington nurses who responded to a survey reported they had to use sick time, or not work at all, due to not having child care.

Now, with many K-12 schools offering remote learning only, many more children are in need of child care who previously attended elementary schools. Yet our state’s child care programs are struggling to keep their doors open, and many have closed.

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High-quality child care programs don’t just fall from the sky whenever they are needed. They are built over time upon a foundation of trust, health and safety guidelines and small business ingenuity.

That’s why Child Care Aware of America and Child Care Aware of Washington are asking Congress to invest in the long-term stability and success of our country’s child care system.

We would never expect our K-12 educational system to struggle month after month with only stopgap funding, and then expect it to be 100% ready for in-person instruction when the pandemic subsides.

We cannot expect it of our mostly privately funded child care system either.

Investments reveal what matters. Investing in America’s children, families and workforce matters.

For Washington’s and the nation’s economy to reopen after the COVID-19 threat subsides, millions of families will need safe, affordable child care. Let’s make sure it will be there for all with robust public investment.

Read the full op-ed.

New York Times

In a report of U.S. child care facilities released on Sept. 24, Child Care Aware of America, a nonprofit advocacy group for providers, found that nationwide, 35 percent of nonresidential child care centers and 21 percent of in-home child care facilities that had been open before the pandemic had closed by July.

According to the largest study of its kind, published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from Yale and Columbia surveyed more than 57,000 child care providers across 50 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico between May and June. They found no relationship between working in day cares and contracting or being hospitalized for Covid-19, regardless of race, ethnicity or other factors.

“Child care providers who reported to work during the first three months of the pandemic were no more likely to contract Covid-19 than those who did not report to work,” said Walter Gilliam, a psychologist and early childhood and education policy researcher at the Yale Child Study Center, who led the study. Most facilities in the study followed careful safety protocols.

But, he added, “If the transmission rate is high in your community, of course it’s going to get into your child care program.”

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Cheddar

First large-scale study finds child care is not associated with the spread of Covid-19. Cheddar's Hena Doba is joined by Yale University Professor and lead on the study, Walter Gilliam, and Child Care Aware of America CEO Lynette Fraga.

Watch the interview.

SiriusXM, Press Pool with Julie Mason

Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D., CEO of Child Care Aware of America, discusses the Yale study and the heroic efforts of child care providers to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Listen to the interview.