A
month before Jennifer Frank was due to give birth, the East Peoria construction
worker started seeking child care. She and her husband Ben looked for something
their household budget could absorb, but they ended up on a waiting list for
months, and then paying almost $2,000 more a year than the national average of
$10,600. (Peoria’s average is about $10,300.)
“Every
year the price would increase,” Jennifer says. “When you have an infant, you
pay the most, [and] we had to provide our own diapers, wipes, and formula.”
Across
the river, teacher KJ Mathews for the first few years of motherhood juggled her
teaching job’s schedule with available child-care services, and the choices
were slim, from a small child-care center to her parents.
Regardless
of location or income, choices are few, with parents resorting to friends or
family to care for kids.
“My
reliance on my parents had to stop fairly quickly because Elli would end up
getting my dad sick, and he has health issues of his own that we had to be
concerned about,” KJ says. “My husband Trenten and I had to rotate many times
on who would stay home.”
After changing
jobs and working second shift, a home day care she’d used had hours that no
longer worked.
“A friend had
decided to start her own babysitting service,” KJ says, “so we made the
switch. It was a hard switch [but] we stayed with our friend for close to a
year until I got my current position with the City.
“My new hours and
salary allowed more options for. We found a day-care center close to home and
my husband's work,” she continues. “She has been there for only eight months,
and it has been a great experience with more kids and structure.”
KJ and
Jennifer are two of more than 15,000 families in metro Peoria coping with the
two main obstacles for parents with jobs outside the home: affordability and
availability of child care.
Adding
to those challenges is a huge change taking effect Sept. 30 – the end of
federal pandemic aid for child-care centers and parents. That could cause increased
costs, layoffs or shutdowns.
“Too
many parents cannot secure child care that is compatible with work schedules
and commutes,” reported the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AEC), which said that in
2020–21 13% of children birth to age 5 lived in families in which someone quit,
changed or declined a job because of child-care problems.
The
country’s lack of affordable and accessible child care shortchanges children,
costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars, blocks women professionally
and hurts families, the foundation added.
“Our
current approach fails kids, parents and child-care workers by every measure,”
said AEC president Lisa Hamilton. “Without
safe child care they can afford and get to, working parents face impossible
choices, affecting not only their families but their employers.”
In
recent years, despite some $50 billion in help from the American Rescue Plan
Act (ARPA), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, and the
Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, about half of
the country’s child-care facilities closed, worsening child care’s limits. The
drop in child-care employment from pre-pandemic levels is affecting more than
460,000 families nationwide, according to analysis by Wells Fargo economists.
In Illinois,
129,599 child-care spots were saved by the ARPA, said the First Five Years
Foundation (FFY), which advocates for more government support, and 92% of
providers credited stabilization grants for helping them stay open.
“Pandemic relief
provided by Congress prevented the industry’s collapse, but didn’t address
systematic shortcomings that have plagued families, child-care providers, and
our economy for years,” FFY said. “The existing structure of America’s child
care market is unsustainable.”
In
Illinois, another advocacy group, Birth To Five Illinois – set up by the state Commission
on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) engaged in a 11-month study
of Illinois’ child-care infrastructure, demand and resources, all to determine
possible improvements to programs and services to both parents and caregivers. Its
findings, released last month, are being shared with state officials and
agencies as well as families and caregivers.
Peoria-area
native Kari Clark was the regional council manager for the report’s section on
Peoria County (Region 48, one of 56 Regions examined), and her report showed that
in Peoria, many caregivers remain unaware of existing programs that could help,
and thousands of kids younger than 6 are in households living at twice the
federal poverty level and without publicly funded ECEC openings.
As
Jennifer realized, paying for care for younger kids is so expensive it’s comparable
to in-state tuition at most public universities and housing costs. And as FFY
has shown, states’ spending varies widely. For instance, Nevada spends $8,910
per child on preschool education while Florida spends $2,254/child.
The
State of Illinois spends $5,398/child – ranked 24th in the nation, according to
the National Institute for Early Education Research.
“Parents
in Illinois spend an average of $9,876 for center-based infant care and $7,248
for home-based infant care each year, putting quality child care options out of
reach for many families,” FFY added.
State
Rep. Mary Beth Canty (D-Arlington Heights), who introduced recent reforms in
the legislature (See sidebar, below), said, “The cost of child care is
really prohibitive when you only have a half-day [pre-school] program and the
hours can be really wonky for working families.”
Also,
government programs such as Head Start, Child Care and Development Block Grants
(CCDBG) or Illinois’ existing pre-K program only serve a fraction of the
state’s children, just 209,919 kids out of a population of 855,688 under the
age of six, “leaving families to pay high prices out of pocket or with no care
options at all,” FFY said.
Overall:
* The
cost for child care has more than doubled since 1990, according to AEC.
* The
federal Child Care & Development Block Grants provide some subsidies to
eligible households (earning 53% of the state median income), but just 30,300
kids ages 0-6 are served by CCDBG or other aid, according to FFY – 3% of children
that age.
*
Two-thirds of child-care centers have staff shortages, FFY reported, probably
due to difficulties in hiring or turnover, and the U.S. workforce taking care
of our kids has about 57,000 fewer workers than before COVID.
* 40%
of child-care employees are woefully underpaid – their wages are lower than 98%
of all occupations, AEC said, and the Center for the Study of Child Care
Employment reported Illinois child-care workers’ median, or mid-point, wage in
2019 was $11.16/hour (presumably higher now since the state’s minimum wage this
year became $13/hour).
* The child-care
industry needs government aid because private funds alone aren’t enough, according
to a U.S. Treasury report, “The Economic of Child Care Supply in the United
States,” which said, “Sound economic principles explain why relying on private
money to provide child care is bound to come up short.”
*
10.2% of parents sacrifice jobs or work hours to ensure their kids are cared
for, FFY said.
Child care is not
a luxury. It’s necessary and it’s important for kids’ growth.
Early childhood is
vital for infants’ and toddlers’ maturation: “90% of the brain develops before
age 5,” according to neuroscience and behavioral research shared by the
Bipartisan Policy Center
Further, there’s a
social benefit.
“Children benefit enormously from high-quality early childhood settings that
nurture and support healthy development, all while laying the foundation for
future success by supporting early learning skills,” according to the U.S.
Treasury.
AEC vice president
Leslie Boissiere adds, “Everyone benefits from a strong economy, and we need to
ease the burden on families so that the economy can grow and families can
thrive.”
However, too many
people still don’t recognize the pressure on working parents.
“I don’t mind
paying for day care if the quality of care is there, [but] some days you walk
into the facility and it stinks of poopy diapers [and] some rooms would have two
or three activities for the day then the rest of the time would be free time,’
AKA play time,” Jennifer says.
KJ adds, “Finding
childcare is stressful. In the beginning, I felt as though I had little to no
options. Most people don't realize how particular you have to be with an
in-home day-care environment because many are not licensed.”
October looks to
be more stressful.
Baby steps:
Reforms and
recommendations
Efforts and ideas
are ongoing to meet the challenges of available, affordable child care.
President Biden in
April issued an executive order on child care aid, but it’s only a start,
according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
The order “is
aimed at expanding access, lowering costs and raising wages and it could prove
to be a helpful framework, but more is needed:
“Federal, state
and local governments should invest more in child care. State and local
governments should maximize remaining pandemic recovery act dollars to fund needed
child-care services and capacity. Congress should reauthorize and strengthen
the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act and increase funding for public
pre-Kinderarten and Head Start.
“Public and
private leaders should work together to improve the infrastructure for home-based
child care, beginning by lowering the barriers to entry for potential providers
by increasing access to startup and expansion capital,” the group continued. “To
help young parents, Congress should expand the federal Child Care Access Means
Parents in School program, which serves student parents.”
In Illinois, Gov.
Pritzker on Aug. 2 signed a bill requiring public school districts to establish
full-day Kindergarten by the 2027-28 school year, with a half-day program
that’s developmentally suitable for play-based learning.
Also, Illinois is
one of just seven states working toward universal preschool, according to the
National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). This year, Pritzker pledged
to make universal preschool a reality by 2027 with his proposed “Smart Start
Illinois” plan. Illinois – ranked No. 24 nationally with per-child expenditures
of $5,398 – has a preschool enrollment of more than 76,000, NIEER reports.
However, “most
children still lack access to high-quality, publicly funded early childhood education,
and preschool enrollment is down by 8% compared to pre-pandemic levels, from
the high of 1.66 million in 2019-2020 to 1.53 million in 2021-2022,” NIEER says.
And “adjusting for inflation, spending per child has not changed in 20 years
and remains too low to support high-quality full-day preschool
Nevertheless,
Illinois’ effort is a “bright spot,” the group says.
“For the first
time in decades, new state commitments to universal preschool give hope that
the USA might take a giant step forward. If these states, including Illinois,
make good on their newly promised investments in preschool for all they will
advance early education opportunities dramatically,” said W. Steven Barnett
Ph.D., NIEER’s senior co-director. “We applaud the Smart Start Illinois
proposal to expand access to high-quality, adequately funded preschool education.
We hope that Illinois will follow through to make this proposal a reality.
Illinois’ children deserve no less.”
Peoria County has
the capacity to meet families’ child-care needs, according to a report from
Birth To Five Illinois, a group launched by the state and the Illinois Network
of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.
“Programs can strengthen
and grow to ensure they are meeting the needs of all families,” says the
organization, which offers specific ideas:
* transportation
funding independent of programmatic funding,
* diversify the Equitable
Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workforce and provide adequate
compensation,
* utilize
alternative options to ease the Early Intervention waitlist,
* increase the
availability of inclusive child care for children with special needs, and
* expand
eligibility criteria for the Child Care Assistance Program
Nationally, voters
prioritize child care, according to another advocacy group, First Five Years
Fund, which reported, “81% of voters agree that child care and preschool
programs are a good investment of taxpayers’ money, including 80% of independents
and 66% of Republicans.”
Last month, a new
labor-backed effort was announced to spend $50 million before the 2024 election
to make child and senior care legislation part of the campaign conversation.
Backed by the
AFL-CIO and major unions, the “Care Can’t Wait” endeavor will focus on reviving
parts of Biden's "Build Back Better" program – including universal child
care and guaranteed paid family and medical leave – that Democrats dropped
because of opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats.
Besides advertising
in battleground states, the program plans to contact 10 million infrequent
voters, host town halls for presidential and Senate candidates, and offer “care
immersions” for candidates to spend time working alongside family and
professional caregivers.
As for area moms Jennifer
and KJ, their suggestions complemented Birth To Five’s recommendations:
Jennifer:
* Increase wages:
“Pay the employees more!” Frank said. “They are taking care of our children.”
* Offer better
hours: “Hours of operation is a huge factor for many working-class folks.”
* Expand spaces:
“Rooms could be bigger; 15-20 toddlers in a room can get small very fast.”
* Plan better: “As
towns grow, the need for child care grows too, but you don’t see many being
built, or added on to. Options for child care are very limited.”
KJ:
* Better hours
would be a big improvement for families: “More child-care centers [should] open
at 6:30 a.m., [and] employers adjusting working hours for parents based on
child-care restrictions.”
She also proposed
employers getting more involved: “Employers [should] partner with child-care
providers to provide discounts and resources.”
