Womenstake

Register Today: Call on Supporting Family, Friend, and Neighbor Child Care

by Helen Blank, Director, Leadership and Public Policy, 
National Women's Law Center 

Every day, millions of working parents rely on home-based child care arrangements, including family child care and care by family, friends, and neighbors, for their children. Given the essential role family child care and FFN care plays for so many families, it is important to understand the role that unions are playing to support these providers and the lessons they have learned.

The National Women's Law Center has scheduled the second in our series of calls that will examine child care unionization and other strategies for improving compensation, benefits, and working conditions for family child care and FFN providers and enhancing the quality of care they offer.

Register today for our second call, Lessons Learned: Supporting Family, Friend and Neighbor Care & Family Child Care in Washington State.

The conference call will take place on Thursday, June 18, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

Presenters for this call will include:

• Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy, National Women's Law Center
• Karen Hart, Early Learning Division Director, SEIU Local 925
• Nancy Ashley, Owner, Heliotrope Consulting Firm

If you missed the first call in our series, "Lessons Learned: Supporting Family, Friend, and Neighbor Care & Family Child Care in Oregon Through Unionization," you can download our audio recording or transcript.

We hope that you will join us for this call!

New Resource: NWLC Child Care Website

by Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy, 
National Women's Law Center 

Last year, we released Developing America's Potential: An Agenda for Affordable, High-Quality, Child Care, a "blueprint" for the future of child care. Since then, several bills reflecting parts of the Agenda have been introduced in this Congress. We are happy to announce a new website to better help advocates continue to move forward on the systemic reforms found in the Agenda. 

Check out NWLC's new website based on the agenda.

The website is a one-stop shop for information on the Agenda, including ways you can get involved with our efforts. As you check out the website, you will see that our featured immediate action focuses on the appropriations process.

It's important that we work together and urge our Members of Congress to support a $1 billion increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and a $1 billion increase for Head Start in the FY 2010 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill. This would be an important step toward the long-term goals contained in the Agenda. While these programs received additional emergency funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, these funds do not compensate for the longstanding funding shortfalls in these vital programs.

Take action today by sending a message to your members of Congress.

Register Today: Call on Economic Recovery Funds for Child Care

How are states using their economic recovery funds to help boost support for child care?

To strategize about how to best utilize the economic recovery funds, the National Women's Law Center and CLASP are hosting a conference call.

An Economic Recovery Update: How States Can Use Economic Recovery Funds to Help Child Care will take place on Thursday, May 21, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

Register today! This conference call is free to participants, but registration is required. 

More details about the key provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are available on our website at www.nwlc.org/economicrecovery. 

The call will be moderated by Helen Blank of the National Women's Law Center and Danielle Ewen of CLASP. Presenters will discuss highlights of their states' plans and include:

• Bruce Liggett, Executive Director, Arizona Child Care Association
• Sessy Nyman, Vice President of Public Policy & Government Affairs, Action for Children
• Sheila Hansen, Policy Director, Child and Family Policy Center
• Patty Siegel, Executive Director, California Child Care Resource & Referral Network
• Clare S. Richie, Senior Policy Analyst, Georgia Budget and Policy Institute

We are grateful for the support of the Birth to Five Policy Alliance for sponsoring this call. 

We hope to speak to you soon!

Take Action: Hungry Children Can't Wait

by Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Congress has an opportunity to give nutritious meals to millions of children — and we need you to make sure Congress does the right thing. 

Later this year, we expect the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to be reauthorized — providing an important opportunity to reach even more children and win additional benefits.

Please urge your Members of Congress to help more children and families by improving the Child and Adult Care Food Program. 

CACFP provides over 3 million children enrolled in child care centers, family child care homes, Head Start, prekindergarten and after-school programs up to two meals and a snack. In addition, it provides ongoing training in the nutritional needs of children, and onsite assistance in meeting the program's strong nutritional requirements. Unfortunately, there are still millions of children in child care who could benefit from CACFP who are currently unserved.

With your help, we have an opportunity to improve the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

There are several key changes that the early childhood and after-school community is seeking in the reauthorization to expand the program's reach and increase benefits to children, including:

• Increasing CACFP reimbursements to stem participation declines and improve nutrition.
• Allowing child care centers and homes the option of serving a third meal as was previously allowed.
• Reducing the current “area eligibility” threshold from 50 to 40 percent to allow all providers living in neighborhoods where at least 40 percent of the children are in low-income families to automatically qualify for the highest reimbursement rate.
• Reducing burdensome paperwork to ensure that more children and providers have access to the benefits offered by CACFP.

These changes will help to reduce hunger, reduce childhood obesity, improve child nutrition and health overall, and enhance child development and school readiness. For more information on ways CACFP could be improved, check out NWLC's fact sheet.

Register Today: Call on Supporting Family, Friend, and Neighbor Care

Every day, millions of working parents rely on home-based child care arrangements, including family child care and care by family, friends, and neighbors, for their children. Given the essential role family child care and FFN care plays for so many families, it is important to understand the role that unions are playing to support these providers and the lessons they have learned.

The National Women's Law Center is beginning a new series of calls that will examine child care unionization as a strategy for improving compensation, benefits, and working conditions for family child care and FFN providers and enhancing the quality of care they offer.

Register today for our first call, Lessons Learned: Supporting Family, Friend and Neighbor Care & Family Child Care in Oregon Through Unionization.

The conference call will take place on Tuesday, April 7, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

Presenters for this call will include:

• Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy, National Women's Law Center
• Faye Zepada, AFSCME Staff Representative, Local 132
• Abby Solomon, Field Coordinator Care Providers, SEIU

In addition to the call, the National Women's Law Center has just released a new resource, Developing Family, Friend, and Neighbor Care Initiatives: Tips from Experts. The guide compiles insights and recommendations on promising strategies for FFN care and offers tips to address common challenges to developing effective federal, state and local policies and approaches concerning FFN care.

We hope that you will join us for this call!

Child Care and Economic Recovery

by Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy
National Women’s Law Center

NWLC's fact sheet has more on child care and economic recovery.

Almost, But Not Quite

by Karen Schulman, Senior Policy Analyst
and Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy
National Women’s Law Center

High-quality child care can make the difference in the lives of young children, especially low-income children. Studies are clear that there are long-term pay-offs from investing in high-quality early childhood for children, their families, and communities. Yet low-income families cannot afford high-quality child care on their own. That’s where child care assistance comes in. Well-designed child care assistance policies can not only help give families access to high-quality care for their children, but also encourage families to use high-quality care and child care providers to offer it.

A recent report by the National Women’s Law Center on state child care assistance policies found that 30 states are making an effort to encourage child care programs to bolster their quality by offering them higher reimbursement rates if they meet some higher standard for care. The concept of providing incentives to strengthen the quality of a child’s early learning experience is a sound one. However, states still have a way to go to ensure that these incentives provide the additional help that programs need to step up their quality. In many of these states, the difference between the higher rate and the basic rate for care does not come close to matching the additional cost of providing high-quality care.

Improving programs often requires additional staff, more staff training, new supplies and equipment, and even modifying facilities. So it was disappointing to find that, in the majority of states with tiered reimbursement rates, the highest rate did not even equal the level  recommended for basic rates—the 75th percentile of current market rates (i.e. what it would take for families to access 75 percent of child care in their area).  In more than half of the states, the highest reimbursement rate was less than 20 percent more than the basic rate. 

We would hope that over time, states—with greater federal support—will be able to offer even stronger incentives and support to programs so that young children have access to early learning environments that help them be ready for school.

NWLC Releases New Report on State Child Care Assistance Policies

by Helen Blank,  Director of Leadership and Public Policy, and Karen Schulman, Senior Policy Analyst
National Women's Law Center

Child care is a basic for families. It helps children develop the skills they need to succeed in school and in life. It gives parents the support and peace of mind they need to be productive at work. Despite all of this, a new report from the Center reveals that states fall short of providing low-income parents the support they need to obtain good-quality child care.

This edition of our annual analysis, State Child Care Assistance Policies 2008: Too Little Progress for Children and Families, compares child care assistance policies in 2008 to 2007 and 2001 in four key policy areas: income eligibility (who can get help in paying for child care), waiting lists for assistance, copayment requirements (how much parents have to pay even when they get help), and reimbursement rates for child care providers who care for children receiving assistance. Some states have made modest progress since 2007, but most states continue to be behind where they were in 2001.

Child Care Providers Left in the Lurch on Health Insurance Needs

by Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy
National Women’s Law Center

While our nation’s leaders debate the necessity for major changes to America’s health care system, Rhode Island, which once offered a rare model of affordable health care for child care providers working in centers and in family child care homes, is moving backward on health care. More than 10 years ago, Rhode Island became a state to emulate when it began to support the cost of health insurance to child care providers caring for low-income children. Now, the Governor has recommended and the legislature has approved a cut to the state’s budget, which will eliminate the two programs that helped to make Rhode Island one of the “Ten Best States” for child care according to Working Mother magazine in 1999.

As a result, 225 family child care providers, along with their children, and 600 adults in 65 child care centers are now left with no help in paying for their health insurance costs. These numbers may sound small, but for more than 800 child care providers and their children — the majority of whom are women who earn an average of $9.05 per hour — these cuts will make a huge difference in their budgets and their access to health care.

Penny wise and pound foolish, Rhode Island’s move ignores the fact that child care is a basic that helps our nation’s children, families, and communities prosper. Healthy caregivers are key in providing high-quality care to children in their earliest and most vulnerable years. Plus, research has shown that the availability of health insurance improves job retention among low-income mothers — so making insurance available to child care providers is likely to increase retention in the field, leading to improved quality and continuity among caregivers.

Rhode Island, the tiny state that was once a shining example of how child care systems can benefits families, providers, and children, has taken a step in the wrong direction.

A Mother's Day Wish List

by Helen Blank, Director of Leadership and Public Policy
National Women’s Law Center

As we celebrate the mothers in our own lives this Mother's Day, we should also remember that many parents are denied the best gift of all — knowing that their children are in high-quality child care.

This care gives parents the support and peace of mind they need to be productive at work, and helps children learn and develop skills they need to succeed in school and in life. However, if current federal funding trends continue, more and more children will lose child care assistance, and will not be able to participate in Head Start.

In honor of Mother's Day, please write a Letter to the Editor of your local newspaper, reminding our nation’s leaders to make child care and Head Start national funding priorities — and please also send an eCard to your family, friends, and co-workers inviting them to do the same.

And check out MomsRising’s Mother’s Day eCard. 

When America supports child care, we encourage children, families, and our nation to reach their full potential.