Bethany Creaser is executive director of the Early Childhood Alliance Onondaga, in Syracuse.
On Nov. 28, 2023, syracuse.com published an article highlighting the significant barriers that local child care providers face — especially home-based child care providers (”Central NY mom quit her job to be a child-care provider, red tape threatens to shut her doors”). As a multi-stakeholder coalition, the Early Childhood Alliance collaborates with local partners to improve the early childhood system in Onondaga County, including child care. Highlighting and discussing challenges and barriers in the early childhood system is central to our work and, in that vein, we’d like to continue the conversation around supporting both parents and child care providers in our community.
Untangling the challenges in the child care system is complex: there are parents who are paying too much and providers who are earning too little. It’s important that readers understand the way that child care is financed. There are two mechanisms that pay for care: 1. parents (self-pay) and 2. the federal government through the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) for those families who are eligible for child care assistance. This is in contrast to the K-12 public school system, where tax dollars are used to pay into a system that creates a universally accessible public good for all families.
The governor and New York state Legislature have, using federal funds, made significant investments in making child care more affordable for many families. In October, the state dramatically increased the income eligibility limits for families looking to participate in the Child Care Assistance Program, a program that covers most of the cost of child care. For example, a family of four with a household income of $99,250 would pay only $13.32 per week for child care, an annual savings of over $20,000. This program expansion is life-changing for these families; more families can truly afford child care and be an active part of our robust community’s economy.
While the cost of child care has improved for families, the landscape for providers remains difficult. The state calculates the rate at which it pays child care providers (under the Child Care Assistance Program) using a market rate method. This method sets artificially low rates based on what providers charge for care — an amount that does not represent the true cost of providing care. If a child care provider accepts child care assistance, the state caps the amount the provider is paid. This cap is well below the true cost of care. New York state must address the inadequacies of the current market-rate method of funding child care providers.
If we are to address the lack of available care in this community and work to eliminate waitlists, we must pay child care providers adequately for the important work that they are doing. Additionally, we need to ensure that there are systems in place to support providers as small business owners. On Dec. 1, 2021, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation that would allow child care providers to opt into direct deposit for any child care assistance payments. This would be a helpful step forward but, to date, the state has made no further progress on implementing this option. Until this changes, local districts, such as Onondaga County, are legally required to send physical checks to providers. This is the type of bureaucracy that makes providing child care much harder and more complex than it needs to be.
In our community there are public dollars that support child care — in 2020 Onondaga County funded a pilot initiative, the Child Care Quality Improvement initiative, operated by Child Care Solutions. This initiative provides training and resources to child care providers in Onondaga County in an effort to increase the quality of care that children receive and to prepare them for kindergarten. Additionally, there are programs like Catholic Charities’ ParentChild+, PEACE Inc.’s Early Childhood Career Pathways Program, and QUALITYstarsNY that all receive public funding and work to improve the quality of care, help providers open their own child care facilities, and fund things like professional development for these early childhood educators. Child Care Solutions, our local Child Care Resource and Referral Agency, serves as a one-stop-shop for parents seeking child care and for providers seeking technical assistance, training, credentialing, and more.
Child care isn’t a money-making enterprise and we can’t rely on parents to fund the entire system: it is a public good and requires investment at all levels. Decades of research have proven how instrumental the first five years of life are — 90% of brain development happens during this time. With this understanding, it’s imperative that we support and compensate early learning to the same degree that we do the K-12 system.
If you would like to get more involved, consider participating in the Empire State Campaign for Child Care’s Advocacy Day on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. For more information visit www.empirestatechildcare.org.
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