Child care in crisis: It could get worse this month

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.”