Power

Senate Takes Small Step to Improve Child Care for Low-Income Families

The bipartisan reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant program will make overdue improvements to a key child-care subsidy program—but it may not do much to ease the crisis of child care affordability in the United States.

children at daycare
The bipartisan reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant program will make overdue improvements to a key child-care subsidy program—but it may not do much to ease the crisis of child care affordability in the United States. Shutterstock

The Senate voted 88-1 on Monday to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program in an unusual show of bipartisanship and regular-order lawmaking.

The bill, which now goes to President Obama’s desk, will make overdue improvements to a key child-care subsidy program—but it may not do much to ease the crisis of child care affordability in the United States.

“It is a step forward, but it’s not a giant step forward,” said Katie Hamm, director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, in an interview with Rewire.

The program, which gives states between $3 billion and $4 billion to subsidize child care for low-income families and serves about 1.5 million children every month, hasn’t been reauthorized since 1996.

“That’s nearly a whole generation,” Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said on the Senate floor Monday.

Since then, incomes have stagnated and child care costs have skyrocketed. Just between 2000 and 2012, median family income shrank by 8 percent, and child care costs rose by 37 percent.

Harkin praised the bill’s bipartisanship and the years-long work of some of his colleagues on the legislation, including Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Richard Burr (R-NC).

The bill is probably the last piece of legislation that Harkin, who is retiring, will lead to passage out of the HELP committee.

The re-authorization will make a number of improvements to the program, including raising standards for child care workers that are shockingly low when compared to other industries like massage therapy or real estate licensing.

Under the re-authorization, all child care workers will have to undergo background checks (which only 13 states used to require) and receive ongoing training on issues like first aid and shaken baby syndrome. Child care centers will have to be inspected at least once a year.

The program will also require states to spend more of their block grant money on quality improvements, care for infants and toddlers, and nutritional and physical activity needs for children.

The program still only reaches about one in six eligible children, and the number of families using the program has fallen in recent years.

One reason for that drop-off, Hamm said, is that states with long waiting lists are under pressure to move things along, and many families get booted from the program after only a few months.

The new bill offers help there. Families who qualify for a subsidy have to get care for at least a year. And states will be directed to take fluctuating incomes into consideration—that will help parents who make more in the summer at a restaurant, or more in the winter in retail—and to make sure that a tiny income increase doesn’t automatically cause a parent to lose their child care subsidy.

While the bill makes many crucial changes and provides a basic floor for health and safety standards, Hamm said it doesn’t actually increase funding and won’t necessarily help more people afford high-quality child care.

“There’s a lot of unmet need out there,” she said.