Child Care Services Association commends the passing of the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package with $39 billion in child care relief funding. The $39 billion in dedicated child care funding provides $15 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and $24 billion for a child care stabilization fund. In addition, there is a dedicated $1 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start programs. These resources will stabilize the child care sector by providing critical support to providers that had to close during the pandemic or struggle to stay open. It will also help families across the country afford child care during these difficult times.
This is a monumental occasion and an historic investment in child care. We applaud President Biden’s leadership and the child care champions in Congress who have continued to fight for relief. We are deeply grateful to every member of the child care workforce, and to the thousands of early childhood educators across the country who have tirelessly made their voices heard, as well as to the policymakers and the President for recognizing and valuing child care as a core component of an equitable economic recovery. Economists tell us that the best investment our country can make in human capital is in high quality early care and education.
Much work still remains to make permanent such landmark policies as the enhanced child tax credit, paid family and medical leave and a comprehensive, high-quality child care system, as well as to fill gaps in key areas such as building the infant and early childhood mental health workforce and services. We stand with our partners in our shared advocacy to make essential programs such as these permanent.
All children deserve equitable access to affordable, high-quality early care and education to lay the foundation for successful life outcomes. We will continue to lead and support efforts to strengthen accessible and affordable quality early care and education by providing supports for families, communities and the workforce.
ZERO TO THREE shares how the American Rescue Plan aligns with our babies’ needs. Child Care Aware® of America breaks down the American Rescue Plan further in their statement. NAEYC shares a statement we all embrace.
“This is the time to start to rebuild an equitable child care sector in a way that puts a diverse, well-prepared, supported, and compensated workforce at the center, driving supply and quality simultaneously, and creating a system that both keeps kids safe while their parents work and propels the science of early learning,” Rhian Allvin, chief executive officer of NAEYC, said. “That means a system that is not built on the backs of early childhood educators’ poverty-level wages nor parents paying prices that are more than in-state college tuition.”
