Opinion: Feds Should Double Child Care Funding

The following op-ed was written by Rick Melita, the director of the Connecticut State Council of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Connecticut is facing a child care crisis.

In communities all across our state families are struggling to get the help they need: nearly half of our residents don’t have access to child care. At the same time child care providers are struggling to provide for their own families. The average salary for a child care worker is $8.50, so it’s no surprise that since the pandemic, nearly 30 percent of providers have left the workforce. 

CSEA SEIU Local 2001 members in the Care4Kids program have been fighting at the bargaining table and at the legislature, not just for a living wage or benefits for themselves, but for improved services for the families that need them.

But this is not just a Connecticut problem. It’s a national one. That’s why Congress must act without delay to increase funding for child care.

Child care providers struggle to keep their doors open at a time of staff shortages, low wages, and higher demand. It is more difficult than ever for working parents to find high-quality, affordable child care options. These difficulties obviously spill over to Connecticut’s economy, where the child care industry alone has an estimated impact of $1.4 billion. Without access to child care, parents, often mothers, are forced to stay home and remove themselves from the workforce. We saw this trend before the pandemic, then saw it accelerate during the pandemic, and continue to see it impact families and small businesses alike.

Congressional Democrats had a chance to provide additional funding and infrastructure support for child care this year but couldn’t get it done. They have another opportunity for Congress to work in a bipartisan way to open new access for families now. 

Representative Rosa DeLauro and Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy have always been advocates for the well-being of Connecticut families. We need them to push child care funding increases across the finish line before the end of this year.

SEIU members, on behalf of the families they serve, feel it’s imperative for Congress to double funding for existing Child Care and Development Block Grants (CCBDG) in an end-of-year funding package. CCDBG has enjoyed bipartisan support for over 30 years and unlike many other policy issues facing Washington, D.C., the child care crisis has a path forward to get funds directly to those most in need. Underinvestment has failed to fortify this crucial program in reaching all the eligible children in our state. 

Currently CCDBG funds are only reaching 13.2 percent of eligible Connecticut kids according to the Center for American Progress. The increase would quickly funnel funding to Connecticut and every other state thereby strengthening the early learning workforce, expanding the supply of quality child care facilities, and drastically lowering child care costs for families. 

The cost of child care has increased 210 percent over the past 30 years and has increased considerably faster than other basic family expenses like housing. Given the reach of the child care system in our country, these investments will not only help to support child care providers, but also millions of children and their families who are struggling to remain in the workforce.

Sixty-one percent of women with at least one child under the age of six report caretaking as the reason they experienced joblessness. The ones who suffer most are our children. Connecticut kids deserve the chance to thrive, and early education and child care is a key to their success.

I urge Representative DeLauro and Senators Blumenthal and Murphy to exercise their leadership for our kids and their families and double funding for CCDBG. This issue impacts families of all political ideologies and there is support in both parties for increasing the investment in child care and early learning programs and allowing parents to choose care options that work for them.