Latest news with #ChildCareCredProgram
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Support for child care is popular as Ohio advocates still fighting for funding
(File photo by Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent). Polling continues to show government support for child care is a popular issue among all political sides. But advocates in Ohio are still preparing their arguments to boost state support as the budget process rolls on. The Ohio Senate is working toward a draft budget after the House approved its version earlier this month. As the process continues toward its July 1 deadline, child care advocates hope to get some things into the Senate budget that didn't appear in the House version. They say they're important not only for families in need of child care, but also for the state economy and the workforce that supports it. The House proposal included $200 million for the Child Care Choice Voucher Program over the next two years. The funding comes from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant. Also included in the House proposal is the establishment of the Child Care Cred Program. It's a provision originally introduced as Republican-led legislation to split the costs of child care three ways — between the state, the business and the employee — when an eligible individual is employed by a business willing to apply for the program. Parents and workers involved with child care space met with advocacy group Groundwork Ohio on Tuesday to discuss the current level of child care support. They also discussed how additional state spending would increase child care affordability and access, and boost the wages of child care workers. Cheryl Rose said when she was a young parent working in food service, child care assistance based on her income helped her remain in the workforce and grow professionally. Now a partner at Constellation Wealth Advisors, Rose said workforce growth is the one thing that will drive prosperity, and workforce growth is possible through support for child care. That support creates longterm ripple effects that may not appear instantly, but will impact the state's financial future for years to come, she said. 'What happens is, 18 years from now, there are companies (growing because of an increase in workers), there are more opportunities,' Rose said. 'It creates multitudes.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Improving the lives of child care workers has its own ripple effects, said Christian Davis, founder of the Cincinnati Parent Empowerment Network. With historically low pay, child care workers are often on public assistance and can't afford food, let alone care for their own children. Bringing wages up and giving workers the ability to thrive boosts the care they can give, she said. 'The quality of your center is really a determinant of the quality of the staff to fill those needs,' Davis said. Groundwork Ohio wants to see the Child Care Voucher Program receive more funding to address affordability, and the group, among others, will to push for an increase to the eligibility level for the state's Publicly Funded Child Care. Gov. Mike DeWine's executive proposal raised eligibility for care to 160% of the federal poverty line. For a family of four in Ohio, that's $51,440. But the House left eligibility at 145% in its version of the budget, a level that the head of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth say is the lowest level of support in the country. The budget also comes at a time when 4 in 10 Ohioans don't have access because of a lack of child care facilities in their area, according to new analysis by Groundwork Ohio. The survey also found that, on average, a mom working full-time spends 27% of her median earnings on child care for an infant. It's worse for moms who are primary earners. Just 32% of Ohio households are headed by women, but they make up 59% of those in poverty, the study found. The average cost for an infant to be in child care in Ohio is more than $12,000 per year, according to Child Care Aware of America. Government support of child care enjoys significant public approval. New polling released by the First Five Years Fund, found 'strong support' among Republican voters for child care-related tax credits at the federal level. The recent polling found that 75% of Republicans think the inability to access or afford child care as a 'crisis' or a 'major problem' for American working families. A majority said expanding child care tax credits would 'strengthen the overall economy.' Of those Republican voters, 83% support increasing the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. It might be on the chopping block as congressional Republicans decide what to include in a funding blueprint approved earlier this month. The Trump administration is also considering a proposal to eliminate funding for Head Start, a child care program for low-income households. Head Start is among the programs child care advocates have said should be supported further to improve education outcomes and child care opportunities, rather than be cut. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ohio Chamber hosts child care leaders to press for state budget changes to help workers and families
The Ohio Chamber of Commerce building in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) As Ohio legislators were working to finish the House's draft of the state operating budget for the next two years, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce held its Childcare Policy Summit across the street with advocates and business leaders stressing the importance of child care to workers and business. 'We can't just warehouse kids, we can't just provide custodial child care to kids,' said David Smith, executive director of Horizon Education Centers. The chamber held the summit for the second time in two years as it leans in to the issue. Its senior vice president of government affairs, Rick Carfagna, said it is 'the largest workforce throttle that we have at the moment.' 'We have an entire demographic of Ohioans that are skilled, they are college educated, they are creative, they are hard-working people, men and women alike, and they are simply not looking for work at all,' Carfagna told the Capital Journal. Before the summit even began, he spoke to lawmakers in the House Children and Human Services Committee, supporting bills to address the cost of child care and the building up of the child care workforce. Language from the bills the committee was considering when Carfagna met with them now appear in the House's version of the state budget. House Bill 2 aimed to establish the 'Child Care Cred Program,' to split the cost of child care three ways: funding from the state, a share from employers, and the rest from employees who are eligible for the child care. Another part of the new draft budget is a Child Care Recruitment and Mentorship Grant Program to help 'increase the number of licensed child care providers in Ohio and assist recruited entities and individuals,' according to the budget language released this week. It contains a $3.2 million appropriation in fiscal year 2026 for 'child care provider recruitment.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Smith was part of a panel discussion about the 'workforce behind the workforce,' child care workers who take care of children so their parents can go to school or maintain their place in the workforce. Meanwhile, Ohioans have been having trouble staying in the workforce because of the lack of affordable child care and lack of access to any child care at all in some regions of the state. Advocates in and out of Tuesday's summit have said raising the eligibility level for Publicly Funded Child Care and reimbursement rates for child care workers should be top of mind for lawmakers if they want to help the situation. In the Ohio House's version of the budget, the Publicly Funded Child Care eligibility remained at the current level of 145% of the federal poverty line, rather than the governor's proposal — and the one child care advocates hoped for — of 200%. In Ohio, the federal poverty level for a family of four is $32,150 a year. Carfagna said the chamber hoped the federal poverty level would be increased, but 'that alone isn't good enough.' As a former a lawmaker who's gone through the budget process, Carfagna said he understands there are numerous priorities being dealt with in the budget, and that legislators have to weigh them. 'There are a lot of big price-tag issues that all just kind of hit you from different corners, so legislators, probably rightfully so, need to be careful to not overpromise,' he said. One big item that has been widely supported by child advocates all over the state was a proposal by Gov. Mike DeWine in his executive budget to create a refundable income tax credit of up to $1,000 for Ohio children up to age 6. That provision did not make it to the House draft. The Child Care Voucher Program, a previously existing program that subsidizes some children's admission into qualified child care centers, did have its eligibility brought to 200% of the federal poverty line in the House budget draft. According to the budget document, however, the voucher program would have a budget of $50 million for each year of the biennium, rather than the previous proposal of $75 million in fiscal year 2026, and $150 million in 2027. In addition to a lack of affordability and access is a problem in which the staffing needed to take care of young children is just not there, advocates said. Tami Lunan, organizing director for the Ohio-based CEO Project who was not part of the summit but has been testifying in favor of child care measures at the Statehouse as part of the the budget process. She said new money for the child care sector should go directly to providers. 'We want to see something transformational, and I think looking to our workforce is a big part of that,' Lunan said. Lunan said the industry already has low wages and high turnover, and continuing to underfund the staff maintains the narrative that the workforce is not as important as in other professions. 'I think that's by design that we're not investing in it,' Lunan said. 'Because we don't see those businesses as viable, we don't see those workers as professionals. They look to them more as babysitters.' According to a 2024 analysis by Policy Matters Ohio, Black Ohioans are more likely to be child care workers, making up 18.8% of the industry's workforce, despite only making up 12.5% of the state population that year. The Ohio legislature has heard testimony from several child care workers, advocates, and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce about the need to incentivize work in the child care sector, and improve pay and benefits for those workers. Traditional business solutions won't work for child care providers, said Chris Angellatta, CEO of the Ohio Child Care Resource & Referral Association. 'We have challenges that are very different,' Angellatta said. 'We can't just compete in the labor market and continue to pay people more and just expect families to continue to pay more. It's already expensive.' To help care providers, the House budget draft has a provision to calculate Publicly Funded Child Care based on a child's enrollment with a provider, rather than basing it on the child's attendance. That's something Angellatta said would be 'critical' for both families and providers. 'We all know that just because someone is not in attendance doesn't mean that spot isn't saved for them,' he said. An Early Childhood Education Grant Program to 'invest in Ohio's early learning and development programs' including licensed child care centers, licensed family child care homes, and licensed preschools is included in the House budget draft as well. Eligibility goes up to 200% of the federal poverty line. Discussions about child care in Ohio come down to one primary theme: It can't be fixed by one bill or one source of funding. Instead, the state and everyone involved in decision making have to implement multi-step strategies to improve the start of children's education and the building of a new workforce. 'If you really want to do this, you have to do it in a three-dimensional manner,' Carfagna said. 'You have to attack it from the eligibility standpoint, the capacity side of it, and we need people to staff our child care centers.' For Lunan, the problem can be looked at very simply by those who hold the state's funding decisions in their hands. 'We literally can not have a thriving economy without child care,' she said. The House budget will now move to the Ohio Senate, which will draft its own budget. The two drafts will need to be reconciled before the end of June, when a budget must be sent to DeWine for his signature. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Child care cost-sharing model brought back to the Ohio General Assembly
Child care worker Marci Then helps her daughter, Mila, 4, put away toys. (File photo by Elaine S. Povich/Stateline.) Ohio lawmakers are trying again with measures to attack the child care crisis that advocates are warning continue to hurt the state's families and economy, including with a bill that spreads the cost of child care out among employers, employees, and the state. State Rep. Mark Johnson, R-Chillicothe, reintroduced a bill he said came 'late in the game' last year, giving it an uphill battle to passage as the Republican supermajority sought to close up the General Assembly term with other priorities. But Johnson's bill is now Ohio House Bill 2, and has been introduced very early in the new General Assembly, with its first hearing in the House Children and Human Services Committee held on Tuesday. This bill, and its companion bill led in the Ohio Senate by state Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, looks to direct $10 million to a 'Child CareCred Program' within the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, to be distributed 'on a first-come, first-served basis,' according to Johnson. The bill models its child care program after Ohio's TechCred program, which incentivizes employers to enroll employees in skill-building programs and connect them with credential providers in exchange for reimbursement. The child care program would create an application process for employers who identify needs within their employees for child care assistance. A program that engages the employer, the employee, and the state is Johnson's way to address what he and child advocates say is a crisis that only hurts Ohio's economy more the longer it goes on. The average cost for child care has gone up on a yearly basis, and a 2024 report from found 1 in 5 American households are paying $36,000 annually on care for their children. 'This financial strain has forced many parents, especially mothers, to reduce their working hours, or leave their jobs entirely to manage child care responsibilities,' Johnson said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX In some areas of the state, workforce participation rates are as low as 50%, according to Johnson, who said that while there are other reasons for a low participation rate, child care is a major reason parents are unable to work or are choosing to leave their jobs. 'If we want to remain known as a business-friendly state, we need to address the child care crisis,' the representative told the House committee on Tuesday. Johnson mentioned the proposal by Gov. Mike DeWine in his proposed executive budget, released on Monday, to increase eligibility for publicly funded child care from 145% to 200% of the federal poverty level. But Johnson said that by just increasing the eligibility level 'we are rewarding employers who pay meager wages.' The Children and Human Services Committee chair, state Rep. Andrea White, R-Kettering, is no stranger to pushing the legislature to address the child care issue, having successfully championed a wide-ranging bill in the last General Assembly that directs different state agencies to study processes and programs on everything from infant mortality to child care programs such as Head Start. Though she's still hoping to see the funding that was left out of her bill come in the new operating budget, White isn't done addressing aspects of child care and child welfare. On Tuesday, White and fellow Republican state Rep. Sharon Ray, R-Wadsworth, introduced House Bill 7. The legislation seeks to 'increase the number of stable, safe family foster homes and long-term kinship care options by providing publicly funded child care for children in the foster care system in these placements,' White told the committee. Ray said that about 14,300 children are in foster care in the state, with 4,000 of those placed with a relative or family friend in kinship care. 'Across the board we have a need for more foster families, whether very young children or teens,' Ray said. 'Let's take the objections off the table by removing the things that get in the way for current and potential foster and kinship parents, so that more loving, caring families can say yes to our children.' Both bills will see further hearings to allow supporters and opponents to give their opinions of the bills before they are voted on by the committee, and if approved, moved forward to votes of the full House. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
