By Viviane Faver
Last Friday, the House of Representatives offered a lifeline as part of the COVID-19 relief bill: $ 39 billion in federal funds distributed through block grants to states, an unprecedented number.
This is more than ten times the amount reserved for child care in the CARES Act in the spring and follows the $ 10 billion in aid passed in late 2020. The money would be crucial for centers struggling to keep their doors open, advocates and lawmakers said. The bill’s value is also in line with a $ 50 billion daycare rescue project that was approved by the House with bipartisan support last year but never made it to the Senate.
The last time the U.S. government paid this much attention to child care was during World War II when it funded daycares across the country to ensure women could work in wartime factories.
The money will be parceled out to states to use in several ways: They can give more money through subsidies to low-income parents to pay for care or boost reimbursement rates, so teachers earn more money. Crucially, the money can be used to specifically help deal with the added costs of COVID-19: to pay for extra personnel, PPE, or other goods and services related to the pandemic. There are subsidies so essential workers, at any income level, can bring their kids to child care, regardless of their income level.
Moreover, the money is retroactive, so centers already in debt or behind on their rent or mortgage payments can catch up.
“The American Rescue Plan marks a historic shift in how our country approaches child care,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who has been instrumental in pushing for child care aid throughout the pandemic and before. “It will allow providers to stay open and better support families who need help affording quality child care — and it also sets a new precedent for finally prioritizing economic policies that support working women and families. I am looking forward to getting this across the finish line.”
The child care funding is one of several pieces of the $1.9 trillion rescue bill that the White House believes will significantly help parents, especially women, relatively noncontroversial. While some Republican lawmakers have lamented that the bill provides an unnecessary amount of aid to K-12 schools, they have been mostly silent on child care funding.
The child care sector in the U.S. is kind of a hodgepodge industry made up primarily of small businesses with a few larger operators like Bright Horizons tossed in. The industry data is spotty, but experts point to this government data to estimate that there are around 130,000 centers and around 433,000 in-home providers (many unlicensed) where parents bring their children to someone’s house.
Daycare centers, schools, and home daycare centers that care for children up to five years old were the ones that most felt the pandemic’s effects. In the last year more than the others.
In the first eight months of the pandemic, 166,000 jobs in the sector evaporated. Many centers have closed. According to a survey, at least 13% of daycare centers and home daycare centers are still closed.
