On September 8, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families held a hearing, “Examining Quality Child Care: Giving Working Families Security, Confidence, and Peace of Mind.”
“This is the second in a series of hearings we are holding about early childhood care and development,” said Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). “Our first hearing focused on the economic, academic, and social benefits associated with investing in high-quality early childhood education and care. And what we learned at that hearing was compelling…And we also know that to get the biggest bang for the buck, we need to ensure that children are physically safe and we need to ensure that we are investing in high-quality programs and providers. And that is what our second hearing will focus on: how we can work together to improve quality, access, and safety in our nation’s child care programs. Specifically those programs funded by the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that helps low-income working families access and afford child care so that parents can work or participate in education and training activities while their kids are being taken care of.”
In a press release, Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-NC) said, “When parents leave their children in the care of someone else, they want to know their children are in a safe place. Parents shouldn’t have to worry that they might be dropping their child off to be cared for by someone who has been convicted of a violent crime. I have introduced a bill, the Child Care Protection Act [S. 581], that would require comprehensive background checks for child care providers to reassure parents that their children are being taken care of by qualified individuals in a safe environment. A recent survey found that 95 percent of parents with children under the age of five support background checks for child care providers and 85 percent of parentsassumed that child care providers must have a background check to work with children. The frightening truth is [that] only ten states require that child care providers complete a comprehensive background check (state and federal fingerprint checks, sex offender registry check, and a check of the child abuse and neglect registry). This is simply unacceptable, and we must do more to ensure that our children are in good hands.”
Eric Karolak, PhD, executive director of the Early Care and Education Consortium, said, “Families are under huge stresses in our rapidly changing economy. With two-income families now the norm, child care is as vital to the family economy as it is to the economy of our communities and our nation. For many parents, if they lose child care assistance, they have no alternative but to buy cheaper care that is less safe and less stable, making it harder for parents to work, and less supportive of their child’s healthy growth and development. As a Tehachapi, California bank employee, facing the loss of child care assistance told us recently, ‘I am very concerned [about] who my children will be with on a day-to-day basis as I will not have stable child care for them.’” Dr. Karolak continued, “It is important to keep this context in mind as you examine ways to improve the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Congress has a number of options to consider, drawing on innovations pioneered in states with CCDBG funds and benefiting from a rich body of research in early childhood education. What improvements specifically can be accomplished is a function of the level of resources that can be brought to bear in reauthorization.”
Donna Bryant, senior scientist at the Frank Porter Graham (FPG) Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offered recommendations to strengthen provisions of the CCDBG, saying, “Given its commitment to quality through the four percent minimum set-aside requirement, federal policy has already affected quality, but it could do much more. The minimum amount of the quality set-aside could be raised – many states are already using a higher percentage for quality. Given the importance of quality to the children served by the block grant, an alternative strategy could be to make quality the basic floor of the program through the following possible strategies. States could be required to use their quality funds on interventions that have been shown to work, such as QRIS [Quality Rating and Improvement Systems], that influence teaching and learning practices and with research evidence that links the practices to children’s outcomes. States could be required to link their payment levels for [subsidies based upon the number of children in child care] to participation in these efforts. Knowing that continuity is important for children, you could establish longer periods for eligibility determination (i.e., a year) so children are not evicted from child care as soon as a parent earns a bit too much. The data and reporting requirements should also be aligned…Change in the CCDBG should bring with it changes in federal leadership for the other early childhood programs as well. We need to work harder at unifying the many early learning programs we fund.”
“I am heartened by the recent revisions to the state plan preprint for the CCDBG as I believe they clearly signal a new era is upon us,” said Charlotte Brantley, president and chief executive officer of Clayton Early Learning. “The changes offer greater guidance to states on ways the funds can and perhaps should be used to create a stronger foundation for more child and family outcome focused administration of the program. I am also very excited about the opportunity for states to compete for the Early Learning Challenge Fund grants. While to some extent it seems that we are all trying to front load everything we’ve been dreaming of into this one grant, I do believe the very process of applying is extremely valuable to states, even though only a limited number will receive funding. The guidelines for the grant application are causing strong examination of where states are, and again signal a new era of accountability for systems change that will help ensure more high need children are in higher quality settings based on evidence of what can really make a difference. It is also exciting to witness additional efforts on the part of the federal government to address long standing issues regarding the often fragmented approaches to school readiness and program monitoring across multiple funding streams and programs.”
