Child Care for California

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After years of neglect and inadequate funding and a pandemic that shuttered tens of thousands of family child care homes and centers, California’s child care homes, centers and workforce is in crisis. The outcome of this neglect coupled with reimbursement rates lower than the minimum wage are parents unable to work, businesses struggling to find workers, and more families and children forced to live in poverty simply due to lack of access to care.

The Problem 

California’s child care system is crumbling. Families are unable to access available care to support their real working needs in today’s 24-hour, seven days per week economy. In nearly every county throughout our state there exists a child care desert wherein there simply is no capacity to serve children from 0-3. Meanwhile, the child care workforce has reimbursement rates that have not kept up with inflation or the increases in minimum wage.  

Impact 

Child care is the social, racial and economic issue of our time. Investments to increase the capacity of the child care workforce are expensive in the short term. However, if this crisis is not immediately addressed and monies are not made available, California’s family child care businesses and centers will close down and any fix will become far costlier and slow. Child care is critical to support California’s economy, to help parents keep working and out of poverty, and to help families thrive.

Solution

The time to act on this crisis is now. The California government needs to provide greater financial support to private child care centers and homes and raise provider rates to a living wage to avoid the cycle of poverty.