ICYMI — As States Begin to Feel Strain of Child Care Cliff, Care Can’t Wait Demands Congress Immediately Pass Funding

October 14th, 2023

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Less than a month after the expiration of billions of dollars in child care funding from the American Rescue Plan, child care programs across the country are already feeling the strain caused by this loss of funding. This crisis threatens to destabilize families, slow economic growth, and jeopardize our workforce. That’s why activists and advocates with Care Can’t Wait are urging lawmakers to prioritize child care funding.

This loss of federal funding has already had a real—and devastating—impact on families:

In Oklahoma:

ABC Oklahoma City: Billions of dollars of federal funding expired for child care, leaving hundreds of Oklahomans with questions, concerns and uncertainty. Now, families are footing 50% of the co-pay bill after funding that covered the co-pay for child care for low-income families expired.

In Michigan:

Flint Side: “But the field trips are coming to an end. Since all of the children at Sent Loves for Kids receive subsidized funding from Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the facility also was receiving extra early childhood funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), funding which ended on September 30. “

“…The state used the ARPA funding in a number of different ways such as child care stabilization to help providers open, remain open, and to operate safely; supplemental pay; assistance in high-need areas such as infant and toddler; and for providers who could offer non-traditional hours such as nights and weekends. ‘While we have sufficient funding in order to maintain our entrance eligibility rate at 200% of the federal poverty level (which is about $60,000 for a family of four), we didn’t have the ability to do that as well as maintain the higher reimbursement rates that we have been paying to providers to provide care,’ Richards says. The result will be a decline in reimbursements to providers.”

In Florida: 

Naples Daily News: “The profit margin at the end of this year at Child’s Path is projected to be 0.2%. That will come out to a $6,000 gain from a $3.9 million operating budget which factors in a fundraising goal of $1.6 million this year, she said. “Our actual existence depends on raising money from outside sources,” she said. The fundraising target is up from $1.2 million last year to help replace $576,000 received from the federal stabilization program for the past two years.”

Here’s what else you need to know about how the child care crisis is affecting families and communities from coast to coast:

• In Kentucky: The Courier-Journal: Kentucky economy, families face crisis as ARPA child care money comes to end
• In Ohio: Axios: Hundreds of Ohio child care centers at risk of closing as pandemic funding runs out
• In Oklahoma: Oklahoma Public Radio: Inflation, federal funding drop off worries Oklahoma child care center owners
• In Maine: Maine Beacon: Sudden collapse of childcare in Aroostook County highlights larger crisis
• In Michigan: Bridge MI: 56,000 Michigan kids could lose child care as federal COVID funding ends
• In Nebraska: Lincoln Journal Star: Lincoln organizations continue to search for a cure to child care crisis
• In Utah: CBS Salt Lake City: Utah parents fear daycare closures, price hikes following massive funding cut
• In Wisconsin: CBS La Crosse: Provider plight: Child care center owners face difficult futures if Child Care Counts bill fails

To schedule an interview with a member of the Care Can’t Wait coalition about the ongoing child care crisis, please email Jess Kelsey at jess@caringacross.org.

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CARE CAN’T WAIT is a coalition of organizations, stakeholders and advocates committed to building a comprehensive, 21st century care infrastructure — that means robust investments to expand access to childcare, paid family and medical leave (PFML), and home- and community-based services (HCBS), and ensure good jobs for the care workforce. The coalition is led by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); American Association of People with Disabilities; Be A Hero; Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy; Caring Across Generations; Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP); Child Care for Every Family Network; Community Change; Family Values @ Work; MomsRising; National Domestic Workers Alliance; National Partnership for Women & Families; National Women’s Law Center; Paid Leave for All; Service Employees International Union (SEIU); The Arc; and ZERO TO THREE.