Family child care professionals call on Congress to invest in child care
August 11, 2021
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Senate approved a Budget Resolution directing Congressional Committees to move forward on $3.5 trillion in investments in child care, paid leave, education and health care to help families. The Budget Resolution now awaits consideration in the U.S. House.
The Senate Budget Resolution calls for the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee to invest up to $726 billion in crucial strategies to support families and our economy including in child care for working families and universal preK for 3- and 4-year-olds, among other things.
Statement from Lanette Dumas, Executive Director of the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC):
“The Senate is taking a crucial step in ensuring that we invest in and prioritize child care infrastructure. America needs high-quality and affordable child care so parents can work inside and outside the home. And early care educators should be safe, healthy and earn a living wage to provide the service our communities rely on and take care of their own families. The health and livelihood of family child care providers are on the line and we simply cannot continue to piecemeal solutions.
“Our children, families, employers and whole communities bear the brunt every single day we don’t invest in child care. Let’s forge a new path in building an early care and education system that reaches every child and values everyone working in family child care programs. We’re advocating for smart policies that help family child care to thrive.”
NAFCC is calling on Congress to:
- Invest in the early childhood workforce – healthy and well, diverse and generously compensated.
- Invest in ways that are equitably distributed.
- Invest where children are. Child care is early learning and early learning is child care.
- Invest so that self-employed early childhood educators in family child care homes have paid leave, health care, and retirement plans.
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