We are in the final countdown! The final federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan will run out on September 30th, and the child care industry will be expected to stand on its own two feet.  

Unfortunately, child care was barely surviving prior to the pandemic, and with the inflation that has occurred in the past four years, the industry is not set-up to be successful. The biggest challenge to overcome is the cost of employee wages. In every other industry, employee wages have gone up to make sure to attract and keep valuable staff members. Without the temporary funding from the federal government issued through the American Rescue Plan, child care programs cannot afford to keep wages at a competitive rate. The only way to increase those wages is to increase the tuition fees that parents pay, and American families are already at a breaking point. 

For many families, child care is already their largest monthly expense. Any further increases would simply cause families to leave the workforce and stay home with their children instead of paying higher tuition rates. That means there is a tipping point between how much per-child tuition a child care program can get before they lose income due to a lack of enrollment. With that consequence in mind, child care programs continue to subsidize the cost of care on the backs of America’s early childhood educators in order to keep their doors open. 

Many child care programs have been preparing for the loss of the federal funds for the past year. They have struggled with the decision to raise tuition again, reduce staff wages, or close their doors. As they struggle with maximizing income, they are also having a difficult time finding the staff members they need to fully operate their programs, whether they are in centers or in family child care homes. With a shortage of potential staff members, many child care programs may have at least one classroom sitting empty, because without a teacher, the program can’t enroll more students.  

Kentucky has just over 2,000 child care programs with centers and family child care homes combined, and that leads to a capacity of almost 160,000 available slots for children throughout the Commonwealth. However, if every center has one or two classrooms closed due to a lack of staffing, how many children can actually be served in our child care infrastructure?

A reduction in child care capacity has made a huge increase in waitlists for families to find needed childcare in their local communities.

This is especially true in the 79 Kentucky counties that are considered child care deserts. A child care desert is a county that does not have enough available child care for the families who need it in order to work. Some families may be on multiple waitlists, hoping that a spot will open up at just one location. Other families may only have one option in their community, so they are patiently waiting for a spot to be available when other children graduate from the program or move out of the area. Since state regulations require a smaller adult-to-child ratio in infant classrooms, the longest waitlists are for children under the age of twelve months. It is challenging to find infant care when some centers choose not to care for infants and toddlers due to the high staffing costs that infant and toddler classrooms require.  

As waitlists increase, child care programs have a little more flexibility to select the children that fit best in their programs’ structure. Many child care programs are having to serve the maximum number of children that state regulations will allow them. This can reduce the quality of care in a child care program; however, it is currently necessary for many child care programs to survive. Child care programs simply do not have the income to voluntarily reduce the adult-to-child ratio and meet the bottom line. This sacrifice often means that children with challenging behaviors or children with disabilities are not suited to be in these large, overstimulating environments. A family may have to remove a child from group care because the size of the classroom is too overstimulating for the child, or a program director may have to tell the family that the center does not have the staff to give a child with disabilities the individualized care that he or she needs.

These are choices that child care programs and families should not have to make. 

In order to find out how Kentucky’s families and child care programs are truly being impacted by the ending of the federal funds, Kentucky Youth Advocates is asking every child care director to complete a survey about how the funding is currently affecting the services that you are able to offer your community. At the same time, KYA is also asking the parents and caregivers of young children to fill out a survey about your access to necessary child care services in your area. These are anonymous surveys that should take no longer than five minutes. The data collected from these surveys can give your local community and your elected officials a concrete idea about the security of our child care sector and which families are being impacted the most. 

These surveys will be open until September 30th, and we ask that all child care program administrators and families in Kentucky take the time to complete the relevant survey and share them with their networks!

SURVEYS NOW CLOSED

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