Affordable, quality child care continues to be a top priority for families that need to be a part of the workforce while still providing a safe and healthy environment for their young children.

During the 2024 legislative session, the General Assembly dedicated more general fund dollars to child care than ever before. That was a first step towards developing Kentucky’s child care infrastructure. Now, during this budget session, Kentucky continues to brainstorm on how to make sure that each family can access child care in their community. 

Representative Samara Heavrin, Chair of the House committee on Families and Children, has filed a comprehensive child care package that could strengthen child care programs both in the centers and homes, as well as across communities. House Bill 6 and House Joint Resolution 50 are based on the recommendations created by the Kentucky Collaborative on Child Care, a group of 40 multisector stakeholders, led by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, that convened beginning in June of 2024 to brainstorm the best ideas to support child care throughout the commonwealth.

This is a dense bill, if you want to get in the weeds, see the details below. The TL;DR version is this: HB 6 and HJR 50 create changes to the critical Child Care Assistance Program to modernize the child care ecosystem with a focus on affordability, regulation changes, commonsense supports for providers, and changes to data collection and reporting.

Improve Access to Child Care for Children with Disabilities

Although many of the provisions are focused on program design, one portion of House Bill 6 focuses directly on supporting teachers in child care programs that care for children with disabilities. All child care providers in Kentucky have annual professional development training hours required, but there are no specific regulations that outline what those trainings must consist of after the first year of training. House Bill 6 would require that three hours of the annual training be focused on supporting children with disabilities.  

Children with disabilities are three to four times more likely to experience abuse and be expelled from a child care program than typically developing children. As a Blueprint for Kentucky’s Children and Kosair for Kids Face It Movement priority, this training would allow teachers to learn strategies to support these children in child care settings in an effort to reduce teacher stress in the classroom and allow teachers to educate parents on how to avoid challenging behaviors. Since child care providers are already required to have annual training credits, this policy change would be a no cost solution to help reduce potential abuse or expulsion.

Strengthen the Child Care Assistance Program

House Bill 6 also focuses on changes to the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which supports Kentucky’s working families by reducing the cost of child care for low-income homes. The bill would compel the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to change the way that it calculates the subsidy amount awarded to families. Currently the Cabinet reviews the average cost of child care in each county to see what the market rate for child care is, and then bases the child care reimbursement rate for families on that dollar amount. 

Child care programs are often unable to charge families the full cost of providing high-quality care. Instead, they must set tuition at levels that are affordable within their local communities, which in turn limits their ability to offer competitive wages to early childhood educators.

Permanently Establish the CCAP Income Exclusion Program for Child Care Providers

In addition,  House Bill 6 would make child care employees permanently eligible for their own children to access the CCAP program, if the parent works 20 hours per week in a regulated child care center or family child care home. 

Kentucky was the first state in the US to implement this program in October 2022. Even though child care employees are often paid a lower wage, the “free child care for child care providers” program has been a way for Kentucky to recruit and retain more child care providers; therefore, making child care more accessible to more working families.

Other components of House Bill 6 and HJR 50 include:  

  • Allowing more transparency on child care supply and demand and child care cost by requiring the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to provide necessary data to the general assembly and local child care communities.
  • Initiating vital updates to child care regulations and the child care quality rating system by requiring stakeholder and third party analysis of the systems and implementing changes to reduce bureaucracy while improving access and quality. 
  • Empowering the business community to help support parents seeking child care in order to participate in the workforce with necessary updates to the Employee Child Care Assistance Partnership.
  • Creating a pilot program for “Micro-centers,” a program that has been successful in other states by allowing quality child care programs to open an additional, smaller child care program with an expedited process and reduced red tape. 

House Bill 6 and House Joint Resolution 50 are advancing in the House and then will move into the Senate for consideration. Let your state legislators know you support these measures by calling or emailing your Representatives today! 

Listen or watch the recent episode of the Making Kids Count podcast to hear Representative Heavrin discuss House Bill 6 and other measures with Senator Danny Carroll.