“We’re really holding on with raw knuckles,” says Jasmine Henderson, a child care organizer with Ohio Organizing Collaborative. “Ninety percent of working adults in the state of Ohio are working parents. If we lose child care, we pretty much can guarantee that we’re going to lose probably a large number of our workforce in Ohio.”

Nationwide, more than 42 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds have faced a negative career impact due to child care issues, personally or in their household. That burden is falling harder on women: In September, 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce, compared to 216,000 men. Millennial mothers in straight couples are three times as likely as Millennial fathers to name child care closures as the main reason they are unable to work.

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The longer it takes for Congress to fund child care in a pandemic relief package, the worse the crisis becomes. As more programs close permanently, millions will be forced to leave the workforce, prolonging the recession and likely resulting in increased racial, geographic, gender, and educational inequities. “It’s about to get worse if we don’t infuse money into child care,” says Henderson.

Multiple bills have been introduced, but each one has stalled in the Senate. In early July, the House passed the Heroes Act, which included $7 billion in funding for the child care industry. It never got off the ground in the Senate, with both the White House and Senate Republicans criticizing it as too liberal. In late July, the House passed the Child Care is Essential Act, (S. 3874/ H.R. 7027), which would provide the $50 billion actually needed to stabilize the industry. While House members have urged Congress to include the act in any upcoming stimulus package, Senate Republicans continue to denounce House-proposed stimulus packages as too costly. October 1, the House passed an updated version of the Heroes Act, designating $57 billion in total for child care stabilization and to subsidize child care costs for families. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring it to a vote.

Before the pandemic, the child care crisis was slowly gaining attention as policymakers built the case for a publicly-funded child care system to replace the underfunded patchwork that exists today. In 2017 and 2019, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Bobby Scott introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act, (S.568/H.R.1364), which would provide low-income families with free child care, limit what middle-income families pay, build more centers, and support livable wages for early educators. During the 2020 primaries, several Democratic candidates made child care the centerpiece of their campaigns, from Elizabeth Warren’s universal child care plan to Kirsten Gillibrand’s Family Bill of Rights.

The pandemic has turned the demand for reform into a rallying cry for parents, providers, and advocates, with countless articles and prominent figures demanding a better system. If lawmakers do not address the now-deepened crisis, it is unlikely that they will remain favorable with their constituents, especially those belonging to younger generations. The Center for American Progress [Editor’s Note: TalkPoverty is a project of the Center for American Progress] found that 72 percent of young voters want Congress to provide funds to child care providers who are facing financial ruin during the pandemic.

Even after this immediate crisis is resolved, a long-term solution to rising child care cost will remain an essential issue. Survey data from Next100 and GenForward reveal Millennials and Gen Zers named the cost of child care — alongside student loan debt and lack of affordable housing — as a key factor affecting Millennial and Gen Z decisions to have children.

This is at least in part due to how poorly the current system serves many populations. Pre-pandemic, Black, Latinx and Indigenous families were paying larger percentages of their paychecks to afford limited child care options, and were more likely to experience job disruptions due to problems with child care. Furthermore, the child care crisis was already disproportionately affecting children with disabilities; and, pre-pandemic 60 percent of rural families were living in child care deserts.

“Let’s be clear,” Henderson states, “if you’re in the fight for racial justice and equity, [child care] is your fight…when we talk about the cycle of poverty and the intimacy it has with racism, sexism, et cetera, we are absolutely talking about [child care].” Whether politicians are courting younger generations or not, stabilizing child care and funding it properly is key to gaining greater support from racial and economic justice movements.

That extends to supporting early educators. The child care industry is 93 percent women, early educators are 2.5 times more likely than the overall workforce to be Black women and Latinx women, and 1 in 5 early educators is an immigrant. Early educators only earn a median of $11.65 per hour, with Black early educators earning an average of 78 cents less per hour than white early educators. More than half of all early educators live in families that rely on public income supports, such as food stamps. Even pre-pandemic, Henderson says, “Providers were already tired. Most of the parents were already overworked.”

As early educators and families continue to do everything they can to care for children in the face of this crisis, it cannot be underscored enough that lawmakers need to intervene urgently and substantially with federal funding. If they don’t, this crisis will only escalate.

As of now, providers meeting pandemic public health requirements are facing an average of 47 percent cost increases — costs too high for providers to shoulder alone and even higher than what most families already cannot afford. A National Association for the Education of Young Children July survey of nearly 5,000 child care providers revealed that without support from Congress, two out of every five respondents — and half of child care businesses that are minority-owned — are certain that they will close permanently. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation survey found that approximately one in five working parents remain uncertain if they will be in a position to return to their pre-pandemic work situation due to a lack of child care.

With the industry on the brink of collapse, and the economy struggling to restart without it, the time to delay is gone. Henderson made the stakes clear: “Now, there’s this urgency to survive.”

The vote is the culmination of a 17-year fight to be granted the same right to organize that is available to their counterparts in 11 other states, including Washington and Oregon to the north. The fight started long before Miren Algorri, a family child care provider in San Diego, opened her family child care center. When Algorri first immigrated to the United States from Mexico, she became an assistant to her mother, who ran her own family child care. Algorri watched the children her mother cared for while her mother went to organizing meetings.

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Algorri took up the mantle when she got her license to operate her own child care. In the more than two decades that she’s run her business, she hasn’t been able to take a single hour of paid sick leave. “That’s inhumane, that is criminal,” she said in an interview. She only has health insurance because she’s on someone else’s plan; when she was younger and a single mother, she had no coverage and paid hundreds of dollars to cover her daughter’s medical issues. “I cried myself to sleep countless nights,” she said.

She still can’t afford to offer health insurance to the assistants who now work for her. For providers like Algorri, who accept children whose parents pay for care with state subsidies, the rates are set by the state. With what the state pays her for caring for an infant, she’s barely making $4 an hour. But she needs to pay her assistants at least minimum wage. “They deserve way more than the minimum wage, because they’re shaping the future of California,” she said. But in order to compensate them adequately, that means that many months, after her other expenses, she doesn’t have enough money to pay herself a salary. So, she goes without.

It’s a common theme among family child care operators in California. In a 2019 survey, the top challenge providers said they faced was low wages, followed by receiving few benefits. Nearly one in five that had closed said it was because of the lack of benefits. Nationally, child care workers make on average less than $24,000 a year.

“Being underpaid, underrepresented, overworked is not something that I wish upon anybody,” she said. “We deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. That’s what the union means.”

The union vote result was announced on an emotional Zoom call on Monday, and in reaction child care providers across the state took themselves off mute to cheer and clap. “This election is historic,” said Zoila Carolina Toma, a child care provider in Los Angeles, on the call, with a classroom chalkboard and shelves full of supplies in her background. “Together we are unstoppable.”

“I cannot find the words to describe how I’m doing,” Algorri said. “I have been crying, I have been laughing… I’m overwhelmed with joy because I know that wonderful things are coming for us.”

Even before Monday’s vote, 2,500 child care workers in the state had joined SEIU without having the formal right to organize and bargain. Then, in September, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill finally granting providers who receive state subsidies the ability to form a union. “I’m so proud to be a little bit a part of your journey,” Newsom said in a pre-recorded video played on the Zoom call. “You had the moral authority, and…now we have the formal authority enshrined in this historic vote.”

The vote, however, is only the start. “Today the real fight begins,” Algorri said. Now that they voted to unionize, they’ll be able to bargain directly with the state for improvements in the child care system. As they negotiate their first contract, their priorities will be ensuring a livable wage for providers, good health insurance, and a retirement plan. Nancy Harvey, a child care provider of 16 years, said on the Zoom call, “We don’t want to be 78 years old still trying to lead circle time.” They also want to ensure professional development and training.

The child care provider workforce in California is overwhelmingly female and 74 percent people of color, according to the union. “This is not just a victory for union rights and economic justice,” Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME International, said on the Zoom call. “It’s a movement led by women of color. Your win today is an important step toward gender justice and racial justice.”

They also care for many children of color, and as part of their negotiations plan to push the government to expand access to child care. The vision of the union includes “excellent early education for all in California regardless of what you look like, where you come from, where you live, regardless of ability, regardless of language,” said Max Arias, executive director of SEIU Local 99.

All of these things are even more necessary in the middle of the pandemic. Across the country, more than 70 percent of child care providers say they’re incurring substantial new costs for staff, cleaning, and personal protective equipment to operate safely. But they have little wiggle room to cover those expenses. Over 40 percent said they had to close in May. Two out of five say they will have to shutter permanently unless they receive public assistance.

Many of the union members are already sick with COVID-19, some even hospitalized and intubated, according to union leaders who were on the Zoom call. Algorri has kept her doors open throughout the crisis to care for the children of essential workers, even as many of her families lost their jobs and had to keep their children home. She’s had to implement new procedures — such as asking parents to bring their own pens for sign in and having the children change into a child care-specific set of shoes — and spend a lot more on personal protective equipment and extra cleaning supplies. She wants a contract that will ensure providers keep getting paid if they close due to the coronavirus crisis, and will offer them extra support to keep their doors open.

“We’re not asking. We’re going to demand,” Toma noted. “It’s time to demand what we deserve, what our families deserve, what the people in California deserve.”

“I know wonderful things are coming our way,” Algorri said. “I’m just excited.”

Families below the poverty line in Iowa are eligible to receive support for the majority of their child care, a benefit that can be worth more than $11,000 per year. Families are still eligible for the most of the credit — about $8,000 per year — until their incomes reach 145 percent of the poverty line, or about $25,000 for a single parent with one child. But if that parent’s income is just one percentage point higher, they aren’t eligible for support at all.

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That steep and dramatic cut-off point for assistance is combined with one of the lowest income thresholds in the country; neighboring states such as Kansas and Minnesota both set their cut-offs above 180 percent of the poverty line.

These programs are paid for by the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which has provided money to all U.S. states and territories for the purpose of helping low-income working parents afford child care since 1990. However, the program was chronically underfunded for decades, and by 2015 served the fewest children in the program’s history. In 2018, Congress increased discretionary CCDBG funding by about 80 percent for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, to help make up for some of the shortage. While this money was intended to make sure more children would receive care, Iowa’s eligibility ceiling has remained capped at 145 percent, where it has been for more than 10 years.

The 2018 increase in CCDBG funding means Iowa has $13 million more from the federal government to spend on child care assistance. While the Iowa legislature appropriated $3 million of the new CCDBG funding to increase reimbursement rates for child care providers, the rest of the funding increase hasn’t yet been allocated by Iowa’s legislature. At least 70 percent of the increase must be spent on direct services like expanding the number of families eligible for child care assistance or improving the quality and safety of child care in the state.

At the Iowa minimum wage, which remains frozen at the federal level of $7.25, pulling together the $186 per week it costs on average to pay for child care for one child takes 26 hours of the wages in a 40-hour week. Nearly two in every three Iowan parents working full-time would have to spend more than seven percent of their income to afford a child care center, exceeding the federal benchmark for affordability.

When getting a 20 cent raise means losing nearly the full value of the child care assistance benefit, the pressures on families are so strong that some working parents in Iowa are turning down small pay raises offered by employers to keep their Child Care Assistance (CCA) eligibility. In December of 2018, the federal Office on Child Care issued a citation to Iowa indicating the state wasn’t allowed to terminate benefits if the family initially qualified for CCA and saw only a modest increase in income. While Iowa is required to make this fix, the change is unlikely to help families who hover just above the threshold for eligibility.

Dave Stone, advocacy officer for United Way of Central Iowa, sees cost as the main sticking point for Iowa legislators hesitant to expand eligibility and soften the cliff effect. “Child care is expensive,” says Stone, and Iowa has “not been keeping up the appropriations” as child care costs have risen faster than wages.

The Beasleys are some of the people struggling to get by just above the cut-off for assistance. Katherine Beasley, her husband Dan, and their two kids, Peter (seven) and Noah (one), live in the Oakridge Neighborhood of Des Moines, a community that provides additional services to support their residents. When Noah was born in 2018, Katherine lost her job — in the first few weeks after Noah was born, he was frequently sick, and Katherine’s employer wasn’t happy that she wasn’t working enough hours. With only her husband Dan’s income, the Beasleys quickly drained their savings and fell behind on bills. By the time Katherine got a new job, her family had received their last possible extension from their utility company, and were about to have their electricity shut off. With her first paycheck, her family was just above the cutoff point for assistance.

“It was very stressful. You try not to show it to the kids, but you do feel depressed,” said Katherine. “The most important part was making sure the boys would be fed; sometimes there wasn’t anything left for us after feeding the boys.”

Through Oakridge, Katherine was able to access a program funded primarily by corporate donors that pays all but $50 of Noah’s $220 weekly child care cost. Even still, when Peter finishes elementary school for the summer in a few weeks, she doesn’t know how she’ll find care for him and still make ends meet if her next request for State Pay isn’t approved.

“I was taught that financial problems stay at home, so nobody really knows. I’d been raised not to ask for help, but it comes down to putting your kids first and supporting them,” she said. Struggling to provide for young children can be a stigmatizing experience. Perhaps this is why political interest in child care affordability lags behind higher education, despite the fact that child care is more expensive than college tuition in 28 states.

Without the Oakridge Neighborhood child care assistance, Katherine said she wouldn’t be able to continue her progress towards a nursing degree, a move she hopes will permanently change her family’s financial trajectory. “I’d have to get two jobs. The kids would never have mom or dad at home,” Katherine said, adding that it’s important to her that she has enough time to advocate for the needs of her older son, a special education student.

Helping families like the Beasleys is one reason why United Way of Central Iowa, along with their Skills2Compete Coalition partners including the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and the Iowa State Education Association, have called on the Iowa state legislature to expand eligibility for CCA to at least 185 percent of the federal poverty line. The United Way of Central Iowa’s proposal would phase out assistance gradually using copays. To Stone, getting rid of the steep “cliff effect” is key. With a gradual phase out, families wouldn’t need to refuse small raises or avoid getting higher-paying jobs to maintain crucial child care assistance.

United Way of Central Iowa estimates implementing its proposal would cost around $22 million per year. On a federal level, the Child Care for Working Families Act, which is co-sponsored by the majority of congressional Democrats, would provide free child care to all families earning less than 75 percent of their state’s median income and cap spending for families earning up to 150 percent of the federal poverty line at 7 percent of their income. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has also proposed her own plan to pay for child care for all families making less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line, and to provide support for families earning more than 200 percent of the federal poverty line who still can’t find child care at less than 7 percent of their income..

“We know support for children is critically important for adults to have success — in work, in certification programs, or in education. And we need to make sure that children get the support they need to enter kindergarten on par with their peers,” said Teree Caldwell-Johnson, CEO of Oakridge Neighborhood Services. If Iowa appropriates enough money for affordable child care, a generation of parents will have the freedom to make a better life for their families, and a generation of children will start their lives on more solid footing.

Editor’s note: The Beasley family requested that their name be changed for privacy.

One of the most exciting elements of the bill is its explicit callouts of disability, acknowledging the fact that 17 percent of children in America have disabilities and need child care too — but can face barriers to inclusion.

The United States is facing a dual problem of scarcity and unaffordability when it comes to child care. 83 percent of parents with children under age five report difficulty locating affordable child care of sufficient quality in their area. Challenges with paying for child care or finding a suitable provider are pulling parents out of the workforce or leading some people to reconsider parenting altogether.

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Common threads in Warren’s Universal Child Care and Murray and Scott’s Early Learning Act and the Child Care for Working Families Act include increasing compensation for child care providers; making child care free or low-cost, depending on income; and investing in quality improvements across the board. But Murray and Scott’s bill is comprehensive and inclusive: It extends services beyond child care centers and into homes and communities, addresses care from birth through age 13 for all children and up to age 18 for disabled children, and invests in full-day, full-year programming to accommodate parents with varying schedules and those who need child care services in the summer.

The disability inclusion in Murray and Scott’s bill — which includes funding for activities such as making sure facilities getting government money are accessible and providing training to staff so they can better serve disabled kids and their parents — builds on the work of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It positions such funding as a routine part of meeting quality standards — something society tends to view as “special treatment” or a “burden.” Everyone in America deserves access to child care that meets the needs of their children, and that includes disabled children, who can be excluded by inaccessible facilities, poorly trained staff, and other barriers.

As long as child care is under discussion, though, it is worth addressing the fact that disability isn’t an issue limited to children and while these bills are an excellent start, we should also be looking to the future. Disabled children grow up and build families of their own ­— 6.2 percent of parents are disabled, and disability is more common in black and brown parents — and those families, in turn, will need access to child care. Sometimes that means care for disabled children of disabled adults, and sometimes it’s care for nondisabled children of disabled adults.

“You really need [child care providers] to be on your team,” explained Dr. Kara Ayers, Associate Director at the University of Cincinnati Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Ayers is the co-founder of the Disabled Parenting Project, which studies the experiences of parents with disabilities. As part of her research, she said she sees issues like inaccessible restrooms and “just one step” entrances — doorways where a single step is all that lies between wheelchair users and entry — are common at the facilities she visits.

Mandated reporters, people legally required to report possible abuse and neglect to the authorities, may have limited experience with disabled parents. Attitudes about disability may lead mandated reporters to be concerned about disabled parents’ capability. This is an issue with doctors, social workers, and teachers, and Dr. Ayers has found that it can appear in child care as well, an issue that raises personal concerns. “If I come in and these people are weirded out,” Ayers added, “one person could decide my daughter is not safe with me and one call could start that process.”

Ayers speaks to a looming worry in the disability community: In every state, it is legal to weigh parental disability when making determinations about whether to remove a child from a home, on the argument that the parent must be “unfit.” According to a 2012 National Council on Disability study, removal rates climb as high as 80 percent in cases of intellectually disabled or mentally ill parents involved in custody fights.

Disabled parents, said Ayers, worry about admitting that they need help or having to explain that services and supports are not a good fit for them, and that hooks directly into the child care conversation — if disabled people are nervous about communicating their needs, it’s challenging to make necessary recommendations.

Comprehensive access to child care, whether accomplished legislatively or through rulemaking, must be inclusive of disabled parents. For example, funds for increasing accessibility could also be used for continuing education classes to familiarize child care providers with the disability community. For disabled parents, adaptive parenting classes –  which teach people how to navigate parenting with a disability with tips on topics like handling a baby while using a wheelchair and using braille-embossed flashcards to teach sighted children to read – could be made more readily available for expecting or newly-disabled parents through expanded funding.

Likewise, parenting equipment should be made more readily available and affordable through existing systems that already connect disabled people with adaptive tools that help them lead independent lives, such as independent living centers, community programs for new parents of all ability levels, Medicaid, and occupational therapy programs.

The United States should also consider what constitutes “activities of daily living,” the tasks that personal assistants can provide for their clients, currently defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services using a model followed by many private insurance providers. The agency’s current definition includes things such as toileting, preparing meals, cleaning, and a wide range of other activities — but most parents would argue they should include parenting, too.

A government-funded personal care assistant “cannot do anything for child care,” said Keith Jones, president of Soul Touchin’ experiences, a community empowerment and policy advocacy group. Jones learned to change diapers with his feet as a new parent worried about being deemed unfit, and commented that it’s ludicrous to ask a personal assistant to “just ignore” a child who clearly needs attention.

As it stands now, Ayers explained, aides may not be allowed to help disabled parents, depending on the terms of their contract. If a baby is crying for attention, they can’t pick them up for a cuddle. If a parent needs help getting a child into a high chair for a meal, they can’t ask their aide for an assist. Explicitly including parenting as an ADL, says Ayers, could help disabled parents and kids alike — and it’s possible to have safeguards for those worried about parents abusing their aides as child care providers.  A regulatory change initiated by CMS could be the most effective way to address this shortcoming.

The growing understanding that child care must be a part of progressive movements is heartening to see, and it’s encouraging that lawmakers like Murray and Scott are exploring disability issues as they develop new policy. Including disability from the start in ambitious proposals like these makes it easier to build on them, creating more equity and justice for the disability community.

As federal worker Sam Shirazi noted on Twitter, the shutdown has created a child care emergency for some families: “I’m a furloughed Federal employee, but the #GovernmentShutdown doesn’t just affect me. My daughter’s daycare is in the Commerce Dept and is closed during the shutdown, but we still have to pay our weekly invoice.”

Nearly 100 child care centers serving federal employees, along with some civilians, operate across the U.S. The spaces are leased by the General Services Administration, which pays $5.6 billion in rent every year. According to the GSA, nearly 7,500 children receive care each day at such facilities, approximately two thirds of whom are children of federal employees. The facilities run on parent fees; the service is not provided by the government.

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Even more child care centers provide services directly through government agencies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, which maintains on-site child care for staffers and a limited number of civilians at locations like its Maryland campus. NASA also provides on-site child care to employees.

Federal workers and the civilians who take advantage of these services have come to count on them, and the child care providers who staff them rely on their wages to support their own families. During the shutdown, parents and workers alike are struggling to make ends meet, whether they’re civilians suddenly without child care, federal employees who remain working but have nowhere for their children to go, or child care workers uncertain about their pay status.

In GSA spaces or federal agencies that remain open, child care centers are operating as usual, though some reported declines in attendance, with federal workers keeping their enrolled children home. Others, like Shirazi’s Commerce Kids, are closed, forcing parents to look elsewhere for child care. Some are operating in GSA buildings with skeleton crews, like the Growing Years Child Development Center in Washington, where the GSA personnel who assist with building maintenance and safety concerns have all been furloughed. The precise number of facilities closed is unclear; many weren’t answering phones or responding to messages.

Many administrators are making the decision to pay child care providers who have been affected by involuntary leave in order to retain them, whether they are employees of nonprofits operating with a memorandum of understanding in GSA spaces or staffers at contract companies. abby, a civilian parent in Colorado, says “the teachers are definitely more poor than the parents,” and can ill-afford unpaid leave. Despite their low pay, they are highly-skilled workers who “could all find new jobs” if they chose to start looking.

To keep paying staffers, centers are still collecting fees from parents, even those who are furloughed without pay, though some are offering discounts and tuition assistance. This means some parents are paying twice: Once to the facility their children normally go to, which is currently closed, and again to whoever is filling in the gap during the shutdown.

Cathy Bisaillon, president and CEO of Easterseals Washington, the program provider at Growing Years, comments that nonprofit child cares run on very slim margins, making it hard to waive or reduce tuition fees, even though their office is sympathetic to and concerned about families like those in the Coast Guard who are currently on furlough. Lack of communication from the government is also complicating matters; she expressed concerns about Head Start funding, even though the program is funded through the Department of Health and Human Services, which remains unaffected by the shutdown.

Whether furloughed or ordered to work without pay, federal employees have child care fees to add to long lists of expenses for households that live paycheck to paycheck. And in the case of those working without pay who have children in closed facilities, there’s a scramble to meet child care needs as they report for work. For civilians who have relied on federal child care for their young children, the shutdown is creating uncertainty and frustration as they game out child care arrangements, uncertain about when the shutdown will end.

Child care administrators are sending out bulletins suggesting parents find college students on break or consider paying center staff for in-home care. Parents are frantically seeking spots in other facilities, or working out care arrangements with friends and family on a day-by-day basis. Those with flex time or paid leave are using it, and some are simply taking their children to work with them, for lack of a better option.

NASA engineer Jessica M reported on Twitter that her child care is raising rates to offset the costs of the shutdown. Some parents have child care access but can’t afford it because of the furlough, so they’re pulling their kids out and hoping they don’t lose their spaces in facilities that often have lengthy waiting lists.

According to the Center for American Progress’ Early Childhood team — one of whom is among the DC-area parents struggling to meet child care needs due to a facility closure — “licensed infant and toddler child care is unaffordable for most families.” While child care subsidies are available, only 1 in 6 eligible families are currently receiving them. Washington, DC, which has been hit especially hard by the shutdown, has particularly high child care costs; parents need to spend 21 percent of the area’s median income on center-based care that meets licensing requirements. Maryland and Virginia both have high costs, and a high concentration of federal employees, as well.

The price tag for child care isn’t the only problem, as many parents affected by the shutdown are discovering. There’s also a significant shortage of available spots and providers; among parents who can afford to pay tuition at a shuttered center and pay for other arrangements, some, like abby, are learning that there are no other arrangements available.

In a painful juxtaposition, at the precise moment that parents affected by the shutdown are desperate for childcare, Congress has just opened a state-of-the-art care facility for the children of staffers. Limited child care options, you see, had been driving staffers away from Capitol Hill.

Welcome to summer break.

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I’m a low-income single mom with two kids, and summer break feels like a giant blurry question mark. I cannot take time off of work. We don’t have any vacation plans. I cannot afford to hire a summer babysitter or send my kids to a string of various camps. While I considered more creative options, like kid-swapping with friends, the logistics—work schedules, child temperaments, and distances between homes—became too complicated to figure out. And while I’m all for the concept of free-range kids, this week it’s 108 degrees. That’s about ten degrees hotter than the National Institute of Health thinks humans can withstand before their bodies start shutting down, which means sending the kids outside to play with sidewalk chalk and roll down hills all day is…not a thing.

As a writer, I only get paid when I produce something, which is hard to do with a three-year-old in my lap. So, since earning money must continue through the summer, my entire work plan is to write while my children are sleeping, lean into my coffee habit, and beg babysitting hours from my parents—a privilege compared to those who don’t have relatives able or willing to help.

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Accessing and affording child care is difficult for everyone all year, not just in the summer. For those like me who are living on a single income, the cost of child care cuts deep into our pocketbooks and chips away at our quality of life. To afford child care often means forgoing something else—reliable transportation, household goods, or even food. Today, the average cost of child care for a single child in the United States is approximately $9,000 per year, which is more than one-third of my income.

In fact, the cost of child care ranks near the top of a recent survey that found American women are choosing to have fewer children, or forgo having them entirely—which could help to explain why the childbirth rate has fallen to a 30-year low. In an article about the declining U.S. birth rate, journalist Amy Westervelt writes, “for all its pro-family rhetoric, the U.S. is a remarkably harsh place for families, and particularly for mothers.” It’s also especially rough for contracted laborers—a group projected to surpass 50 percent of the American workforce over the next decade–who sacrifice income each time they aren’t able to take a job. “That gig economy you keep hearing so much about, with its flexible schedule and independence?” writes Westervelt. “Yeah, it sucks for mothers… I can tell you exactly how great and balanced it felt to go back to work two hours after giving birth.”

I went right back to work after both of my births. Less than 48 hours after I had my first child, I was hauling produce on my vegetable farm. Two days after my second child was born, I sat in a business meeting while my milk came in. Now as a freelance writer, most of the time I work 7 days a week writing articles, editing other people’s articles, pitching stories, and chasing late payments. Sometimes I work on projects for months before seeing a dime.

While women are increasingly entering the gig economy (a 2014 study showed that 53 percent of full-time freelancers were women), there are real questions about a burgeoning economy that dangles the carrot of flexibility to busy, multitasking women (many of them mothers), yet still manipulates and mistreats them through pay discrimination and abusive power structures. FastCompany reported that “[female] Uber drivers earn 7 percent less than male drivers, while women freelancers charge lower rates, are more likely to get paid late, and are four and a half times less likely to be earning over $150,000.”

And then there’s child care. In 2016 alone, nearly 2 million parents of children age 5 and younger had to quit a job, not take a job, or greatly change their job because of problems with child care.

That means many parents—and statistically, mothers more than fathers, due to the archaic, sexist nature of both workplace and household expectations—are forced to cut back hours, miss out on trainings or job-related experiences, or pass up promotions due to the inability to work more or the need for flexible hours. It’s part of the “motherhood penalty” that stunts career advancement and reduces income, which snowballs considerably over a woman’s lifetime. That penalty reduces the ability of entire households—especially those of single mothers—to accumulate wealth or gain social mobility. In contrast, most working fathers earn more than men without kids.

In a conversation on NPR’s 1A about the motherhood wage gap, Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers said, “Our culture and our policies have just failed to account for the fact that we have families. … And in the 21^st century, that means we actually need child care. We need elder care. We need paid family leave. These are just basic infrastructure assumptions we need to make that we haven’t caught up to.” She notes the emergence of new ideas and solutions, such as Universal Family Care, a proposed family care insurance fund that working Americans could draw upon to afford child care, elder care, and paid family medical leave.

While I’ve been able to carve out a successful job as a freelance writer and editor, there are limits to my ability to thrive. As a single parent, jet-setting off to cover breaking news or spending weeks away from home investigating injustice is out of the question, even though I think I’d do it well. I need predictability and routine, stable income, and child care for those long days when I’m on deadline. I find working from home while parenting to be beyond frustrating and near-impossible. I literally cringe at the zillionth snack request of the day and the never-ending chorus of Mom! Mom! Mom! Some days I’ve barely written a sentence by 2 p.m.

Still, there is something missing in these conversations about working and motherhood. The statistics cannot measure the bone tiredness of a mother any better than it can articulate the fierce tether that connects me to my children. There is magic in the unmeasurable. There have been actual moments when I have thought, If only someone could see me changing a diaper and typing at the same time. Or the phone calls with editors while balancing a newly-potty-trained toddler on the toilet. How many times I have held a sleeping feverish child while simultaneously racing a deadline. As Rufi Thorpe writes, “It is lovely; it is intolerable; it is both.”

“We’re just trying to make sure our constituents have the safe water and essential products in their homes that are needed for the health and safety of their families,” said Gary Goosman, Mayor of the village of Amesville, population 180, and president of the Mayors’ Partnership for Progress. “The state has more than enough resources to get this done.”

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Since 2011, TANF caseloads in Ohio have been cut nearly in half, from 99,000 to 53,000 households. The drop isn’t because people are faring better, but largely due to the program’s inflexible work requirement that many struggle to meet when they can’t work, lack needed transportation to get to a job, or can’t get enough hours at the jobs they do have.

As a result, for every 100 families with children in poverty in the state, only about 22 now receive cash assistance—down from 29 in 2013, and 89 prior to bipartisan “welfare reform” in 1996. There are now many more children in Ohio living in households with zero cash income than there are children in families receiving cash assistance. (The Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services declined to provide an exact figure.) This is a problem nationwide, as evident in the rise in the number of households living on less than $2 per person, per day: from 636,000 in 1996 to nearly 1.5 million in 2011. Over the same period, the number of children in the United States living in $2-a-day poverty also doubled, from 1.4 million to 2.8 million.

Goosman said that this drain in assistance is having a significant effect on the local economies of many rural communities in Ohio. In the mayors’ region alone, there is now at least $50 million less annually in cash assistance and SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) benefits compared with 2011. The average SNAP benefit is just $1.40 per person, per meal—and, like TANF, the program has strict work requirements for certain recipients.

“An entire town can be impacted by the amount of money residents have to spend on groceries, or medications, or transportation. People are living closer to the edge,” said Goosman.

And yet, seven months after the mayors’ request, the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services (JFS) would only tell the coalition repeatedly that its proposal remained under consideration.

Finally, on May 4, JFS notified the mayors via email: In September—one year after its initial request—the coalition will receive $500,000 from the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) toward water bill assistance. In all, the grant will provide 2,450 households with a one-time payment of $200 “to ensure service will be maintained for a minimum of 30 days.” This seems a drop in the bucket in a state where 22 percent of neighborhoods have residents who are currently unable to cover their monthly water bill. The average water-sewer rate in Ohio in 2016 was $1,289 annually, which helps explain why the mayors were looking for individual payments of $500 to qualifying families living below 150 percent of the federal poverty line and a total of $8 million toward assistance. There was also no mention of the mayors’ $4 million funding request in support of the purchase of essential household items for cash-poor families.

JFS provided the bipartisan mayors group with no explanation as to how it reached its figure, or why the funds would be drawn from those already earmarked for cash-strapped community action agencies that provide local services like housing assistance, job training, energy assistance, child care, transportation, and more.

“It was a surprise,” said Goosman. “While we appreciate this funding and it will help us get a pilot program going, we weren’t asking for $500,000 from CSBG, we were asking for $12 million out of $570 million in unspent TANF funds.”

A spokesperson for JFS confirmed that there are indeed now $570.7 million in unused TANF funds. However, he said that those monies are committed to increased funding for child care facilities that are able to meet the state’s new quality standards in the future. But the mayors’ towns might not benefit from those funds either.

“In our region, a lot of our child care facilities won’t even be able to afford the quality improvements the state is mandating, so they will shut down,” said Jack Frech, an Americorps VISTA volunteer with the coalition who retired after 33 years as director of the Athens County Department of Jobs and Family Services. “So the TANF money intended for our poor and working-class families will instead go to facilities primarily serving wealthier kids.” (JFS declined to comment.)

It is also notable that a recent Congressional appropriation included an 80 percent increase in discretionary child care funding—enough that one might think the state need not force its mayors to choose between water now and child care in the future.

The bipartisan group of mayors met last week to discuss next steps. “We voted unanimously: We’re happy to have the $500,000 but we’re still requesting the $12 million from the state,” said Goosman.

Ryan’s 2016 agenda—which he says is still his template for benefit cuts—uses Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF or “temporary assistance,” which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996) as a success story and model for future cuts. But evidence is mounting that a growing number of states are outright failures when it comes to meeting the first purpose of temporary assistance: providing assistance to families so that children “can be cared for in their own homes” instead of in foster care or institutions.

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The number of children in foster care now exceeds the number of children being cared for at home with the support of temporary assistance in at least seven states: Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

As the map below shows, in 2016, the ratio of children in foster care to children receiving temporary assistance varied from .07 in California to 2.77 in Wyoming.* In 21 states, this ratio is greater than .5, meaning that for every two children receiving TANF while living at home, there is one or more children living in foster care. In seven states, the ratio is 1:1 or more, and in two states (Wyoming and Indiana) there are roughly two or more children in foster care for every one receiving TANF while living at home.

The ratio of children in foster care to parents and other relative caregivers receiving TANF varies even more: from .11 in Maine to 41.56 in Idaho. The ratio is greater than 1 in 34 states, meaning that for every one parent receiving temporary assistance while caring for children in these states, there is one or more children living in foster care.

Let’s take a closer look at one of these failed TANF states: Kansas. Starting in 2011 under Gov. Sam Brownback, Kansas began implementing a series of cuts that have made it much harder for working-class parents and children to receive temporary assistance, regardless of their financial situation.

As the cuts were imposed, the number of Kansas children and parents receiving temporary  assistance plummeted. At the same time, the number of children in the child welfare system, including the number being cared for in foster homes, increased. By 2016, nearly 11,000 Kansas children were spending time in foster care. That same year, only about 9,200 Kansas children were receiving temporary assistance while being cared for in their own homes. Moreover, a significant number of these children were being cared for in the homes of grandparents or other relatives rather than parents. Less than 3,000 actual parents were receiving temporary assistance themselves in 2016.

To put these numbers in context, nearly 3 million people live in Kansas. Nearly 1 in 3 Kansas workers are paid under $12 an hour, and 1 in 7 Kansans are food insecure. Some 100,000 Kansas children live in families with incomes below the poverty line, and roughly 20,000 Kansas children live apart from both their parents.

Kansas officials claim the rise in children living in foster care is not due to the temporary assistance cuts. Research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly suggests otherwise. In their preliminary research, economist Donna Ginther and social work professor Michelle Johnson-Motoyama, both at Kansas University, have found that the number of children in the child welfare system, including foster care, increased in Kansas and other states that implemented more restrictive TANF policies. In recent testimony before the Children and Seniors Committee of the Kansas House of Representatives, Johnson-Motoyama said that “restrictions on access to [temporary assistance] appear to have unintended consequences with regard to human costs and costs to Kansas taxpayers.”

Most children end up in the child welfare system not because of abuse, but because officials decide parents aren’t adequately meeting their children’s basic needs. Recent research suggests that when low-income parents receive even modest amounts of additional income each month, their children’s risk of involvement in the child welfare system goes down.

As a practical matter, it will be difficult to definitively prove that cuts in temporary assistance are pushing more children into the child welfare system. But debates about causality shouldn’t distract from the fundamental problem. If a state has more children in foster care than children receiving temporary assistance in their own homes, this should raise searching questions about whether the state is meeting the first purpose of temporary assistance.

Beyond this, temporary assistance in the vast majority of states needs to do more to support parents’ role as caregivers and homemakers. There are no provisions built into the program to make sure it is doing enough to meet families’ needs. The only real accountability provisions for states in TANF direct them to not provide assistance to families, typically because parents aren’t working enough each week. States and the federal government have paid little heed to parents’ more fundamental role—for their children—as caregivers and homemakers.

* The most recent state-level foster care data available from the Department of Health and Human Services are for 2016. Even fewer children are receiving TANF today, so this ratio will have grown in most states.

The details of the Child Tax Credit are not yet public, including the amount of the expansion and whether she would make changes to help children in families with very low incomes who cannot currently receive the full credit. But one thing is very, very clear: This credit is clearly designed to help make the Trump tax plan, which is heavily skewed toward tax breaks for the wealthy, more politically palatable.

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The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that 80 percent of the tax breaks would go to people in the top 1 percent of earners. In other words, people like Ivanka Trump.

Just repealing the estate tax—which is only one of many planned tax cuts—would amount to a $1.1 billion windfall for Ivanka Trump and her siblings. That’s enough to pay for 100,000 children to go to child care for an entire year. And that’s before accounting for the trillions it would cost to slash the top income tax rate, give low rates to pass-through businesses, and re-open loopholes for the wealthy.

But Trump, the dutiful soldier, is sticking to her message. That means continuing to insist that her child care plan will support most Americans, even though the plan she pitched during the campaign would have given the average family in a county that swung heavily toward Trump in the 2016 presidential election just $5.55 per year. (Residents in Ivanka Trump’s former Manhattan neighborhood would stand to gain more than $7,000 in tax benefits.) A year later, the same principles apply. The Trump administration is looking to use empty rhetoric to appeal to working women to sell a major tax break for wealthy people like her.

To be clear, the Child Tax Credit can provide a vehicle for improving economic security among families with young children. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 16 million children in low-income working families would not receive the benefit because their families’ earnings are too low. Proposals to make the credit refundable would allow lower-income families to actually benefit, and proposals to make it more generous could go a long way to defray costs associated with raising children.

If she wanted, Ivanka Trump could go even further than taxes. She could support Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Bobby Scott’s (D-VA) bill to guarantee child care assistance to low-income and middle-class families, or she could challenge her father’s requests to cut the program that offers child care assistance to low-income working families and eliminate on-campus child care and afterschool programs.

Or, if taxes are really what speak to her, she could move on to expanding child care assistance through the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC). Right now, the CDCTC primarily reaches upper-middle-class families, and the $1,050-per-child credit pales in comparison to the $10,000 annual price tag at a child care center.

If Ivanka Trump wanted to make a difference, there’s no shortage of ideas. But instead, she’s selling another “by Ivanka, for Ivanka” child care plan that won’t work for the millions of families who struggle to pay for the child care they need.

But the reality is, Trump’s proposal is essentially a tax break for the wealthy disguised as a child care plan.

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There is a real child care crisis in the United States. The current system doesn’t work for anyone: Parents are shelling out more for child care than they’ll need to pay for in-state college tuition, and providers are still closing their doors due to lack of funding. Low-income and middle class families need help affording quality child care, but the Trumps have something different in mind.

Here are five reasons why Trump’s child care plan doesn’t cut it:

1. It provides the biggest benefit to wealthy people

The Trump child care plan was written by Ivanka, for Ivanka. It’s centered around a tax deduction, which would let families earning up to $500,000 per year deduct their child care costs from their taxable income up to the average cost of child care in the state.

Unlike a refundable tax credit, which would give money to anyone who is eligible, a tax deduction lowers peoples’ taxable income and increases their tax refund at the end of the year. That benefits high-earners more than lower and middle-income families—under Trump’s plan, 70 percent of benefits would go to families earning at least $100,000.

2. It doesn’t help people when they actually need it

Under Trump’s plan, families would need to pay upfront for child care each week or month, and then wait until tax season to get a small deduction. Most families don’t have that kind of liquid income—a parent working full time at a minimum wage job would have to spend anywhere from 62.9 percent of their income (if they live in South Dakota) to 183.5 percent of their income (if they live in Washington D.C.) to pay for child care for an infant and a four year old.

If Trump was serious about helping middle class Americans, his proposal would provide support for families throughout the year, when they need it. For example, proposals for a High-Quality Child Care Tax Credit—where a family would contribute between 2 and 12 percent of its income on a sliding scale—would advance money to families on a monthly basis so that they would never need to pay full price out of pocket.

3. It won’t improve child care quality

Providing high-quality child care is expensive. Around 60 percent of funding for child care providers comes directly from parents, so providers depend largely on tuition to cover the cost of staff salaries, classroom materials, and building maintenance. So, high-quality providers tend to have higher tuition prices. That creates a gap in the type of care kids ultimately get—children whose parents have money get high-quality care, and kids whose parents don’t settle for less.

Trump’s plan doesn’t address the fact that access to high-quality early childhood education depends on a family’s income. That perpetuates the achievement gap that plagues students later on. Without access to high-quality early childhood education, low-income students and children of color start kindergarten behind their peers in math and reading. They struggle to make up the difference later on.

4. It won’t create more child care options

Many parents have trouble even finding a licensed child care provider in their community. A recent study found that across eight states, 42 percent of children live in child care deserts where child care supply does not meet demand. The problem is particularly pronounced in rural areas, where the majority of children—55 percent—live in child care deserts.

Trump’s plan doesn’t create incentives for new providers to enter the child care market, which would increase the availability of child care for families. A meager tax deduction is not enough to build a child care infrastructure, especially in rural areas where there is the greatest need for child care.

5. It doesn’t support the early childhood workforce

Trump’s plan does not even mention the 2 million—mostly female—early childhood educators that care for the nation’s youngest children every day. The median annual salary for child care workers is just $20,320, which is less than the median for animal caretakers and parking lot attendants. Almost half of child care workers rely on some form of public assistance, and they often lack basic benefits like health insurance. That has consequences for the children in their care.

Early childhood is a critical period when children grow, learn, and develop rapidly. In order to thrive, children need careful attention from adults that make eye contact, engage in dialogue using age-appropriate language, and respond to their expressions of emotion. High levels of stress—like the kind caused by economic insecurity—interfere with an educator’s ability to give a child the meaningful attention that they require throughout the day.

Last night we heard President Trump say that he wants to help financially-strapped families, but families cannot work unless they have affordable child care. Trump’s child care proposal won’t meet most families’ needs—it’s little more than a tax windfall for wealthy people like him. If he understood the child care crisis that low-income and middle class families face each day, he’d put forward a complete plan that addresses child care affordability, quality, and access.

Whatever your political leanings, you probably didn’t come up with “…do better in life than their peers who didn’t.” But according to a recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), it’s true. The authors compared siblings who spent different amounts of time in public housing, and found that the children who spent more time in the projects had higher earnings and a lower chance of being incarcerated. Kids got a similar benefit when their families received vouchers to help them pay the rent at a private apartment.

The point, of course, is not that public housing is an ideal place to spend a childhood. It’s that the alternatives can be much worse.

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In my city, Nashua, New Hampshire, one of those alternatives is the Country Barn Motel and Campground. It’s an old house and barn that the owners turned into a bunch of individual rooms, plus some trailers on blocks. Everything’s painted a rustic brown, and when I visited—a week before Halloween—it was decorated with fake cobwebs.

It’s a nice place in a lot of ways. Kids ride bikes around the quiet, wooded grounds, and neighbors volunteer to babysit for each other. But many of the families here are facing the kinds of stress that can have troubling long-term consequences for kids.

Inside one door, guarded by three carved pumpkins, Crystal and Jimmy live with their baby, five-year-old son, and three-year-old daughter in a single room. There are two beds, a TV, a refrigerator, and a stove—only one of the electric burners works—and that’s about it. They’ve been here for about five months. While I talked with the adults, the older kids showed off their gymnastic moves, mostly ignoring a cartoon playing on the TV.

“We’re trying to save money for a place, but everywhere’s expensive,” Jimmy said.

Before moving here, the family lived with Jimmy’s stepmom. But, between her five kids and their three, squeezing everyone into a three-bedroom apartment didn’t work for long. Crystal and Jimmy have been on a wait list for public housing for two years, but their number hasn’t come up. Researchers who study housing policy have found that’s not terribly unusual. As of 2012, there were around 6.5 million U.S. households waiting for either a spot in public housing or a housing voucher.

Crystal and Jimmy do get government help with their rent, but it’s through a city program that’s supposed to be a short-term emergency backstop. They worry that they could lose that assistance any day now. Meanwhile, Jimmy said, living at the motel is tough on the kids.

“Just putting them to bed, everything’s extra hard,” Jimmy said. “We’re so on top of each other. If one of them’s awake, they’re all awake.”

The U.S. Department of Education warns that moving around a lot, or living in temporary situations like motels or doubling up with other families, tends to hurt children’s school achievement and emotional development. One recent, randomized study in New York City found that families that don’t get help with housing are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety compared with those that move to new, subsidized housing. That repeated exposure to acute stress might help explain the long-term effects on kids’ incomes and incarceration rates that the new NBER paper found—the stability matters.

David Evans lives with his girlfriend and their three kids, including a newborn baby, in one of the trailers at the Country Barn. It’s $225 a week—cheaper than living inside the motel—but it only comes with a hot plate for cooking, and you have to use a shared bathroom in a separate building. Between his paycheck from a warehouse job and his girlfriend’s disability benefit, they can only afford rent, food, and clothes for the kids. An apartment with a monthly rent might be cheaper, but they’d have to save up for the security deposit.

Things were easier when the family got part of their rent through a federal Section 8 voucher. But then his girlfriend got into a dispute with her family, who had control over her Social Security checks. Ultimately, David and his girlfriend lost access to the checks, which made it impossible to pay their rent. They were evicted—which meant permanently losing their eligibility for the voucher.

“Telling my kids we have to go live in a trailer, that’ll break you down,” Evans said.

Evans is a former heroin addict, clean three years. He’s used to working hard at seeing the bright side of things. But he said living in a 200-square foot trailer is hard on the whole family, particularly his eight-year-old stepdaughter.

“She gets edgy, so she has a little bit of an attitude,” he said.

In fact, the girl has been lobbying her mother to go live with her biological dad, who has been in and out of jail and recently got back in touch after years out of her life.

“She’s even like ‘Mommy, it’s just until you get an apartment,’” Evans said. That’s hard on his girlfriend, but he sees where the girl is coming from. “I don’t want to be here either.”

Unlike a lot of people at the Country Barn, Angela Winslow said she really likes it here. She’s fixed up her room in the motel with country-style knick-knacks and some of her own furniture. But she may not be able to stay long. When she moved in two and a half months ago, she had custody of her seven-year-old grandson—so she was able to get some help from the local welfare office.

“He’s such a great kid,” she said. “I had him since he was 12 months old.”

Recently, Winslow’s daughter regained custody of the boy. Winslow doesn’t think that’s a good situation for him—she isn’t crazy about some of her daughter’s life choices—but she’s been happy to at least care for him on the weekends when her daughter drops him off.

Now, though, since she’s no longer his legal guardian, she’s liable to lose her housing assistance, health insurance, and food stamps. If she can’t stay at the Country Barn, Winslow said she’ll move in with her other daughter. They get along well, but she’ll have to sleep on the couch or a blow-up mattress. That will complicate her weekends with her grandson, and it might not be the best situation for her and her daughter either.

“She’s a night owl,” she said. “I’m not.”

The thing is, even if getting help paying for housing would benefit Angela Winslow’s grandson, and David Evan’s three children, and Crystal and Jimmy’s kids—and all the rest of the kids who’ve spent time at the Country Barn—there isn’t enough funding for it. The U.S. hasn’t built much public housing since the 1990s, and it has demolished some of what it used to have. Housing vouchers aren’t filling the gap, since only 1 in 4 households that qualifies for a housing voucher actually gets one. Meanwhile, the federal government spends almost twice as much on mortgage interest tax deductions, which overwhelmingly go to the wealthy, as it does helping people with rent.

Winslow said her worries about losing her room, along with everything else that’s happened in her life over the past few months, have gotten her feeling kind of depressed. She’s hoping her case worker returns her call about staying in the hotel soon.

“If they give me the news they’ll help me, then of course I’ll stay here,” she said.

Otherwise?

“I’ll just figure it out.”

In 2014, 46.7 million Americans—more than one in seven—lived in poverty, and nearly half of Americans will experience at least a year of poverty or near-poverty during their working years. Along with causing tremendous human hardship and suffering, poverty is enormously costly to the United States. It hampers educational attainment, reduces health, decreases workforce productivity, and damages the social cohesion of communities. Child poverty alone costs the United States an estimated $672 billion every year—nearly 4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

Poverty is not inevitable, particularly not in the richest nation on earth. Rather, its persistence is in large part a result of misplaced priorities and deliberate policy choices. Indeed, it has already been shown—in both past experience and extensive research—that policy choices can make a difference in the lives of low-income families, helping them reach and remain in the middle class. Recently, however, politicians and policymakers have lacked the political will to make many of these policies a priority.

Most good policies are not costless. But the price tags for many poverty-reducing programs pale in comparison with the billions of dollars the United States already spends on tax breaks that primarily benefit wealthy individuals and corporations—funds that could be used to provide adequate nutrition or access to high-quality child care, reduce homelessness, or invest in low-income children and workers. What’s more, the price tags of smart policies do not reflect the substantial public savings the nation experiences from investments that improve health, increase educational attainment, enhance workforce productivity, and boost the economy. To take just one example, every dollar spent on benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, generates an estimated $1.70 in additional economic activity.

The United States can afford to dramatically reduce poverty and increase economic opportunity. Here are four ways in which the U.S. Congress could make an enormous dent in poverty and the opportunity gap—each costing significantly less than the tax breaks Congress currently gives to the wealthy.

Boost effective tax credits for low-income workers and families

The Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, is one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty tools, encouraging work and boosting family income. In 2014, it helped more than 6.2 million Americans—including 3.2 million children—avoid poverty. However, low-income workers without qualifying children receive very little help from the EITC; indeed, these so-called childless workers are the only group whom the tax code taxes further into poverty. Lawmakers across the political spectrum—including Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI)—have long called for improving the EITC for childless workers. President Barack Obama’s and Speaker Ryan’s similar proposals, which would double the maximum credit to more than $1,000 and lower the minimum age of eligibility from 25 to 21, would help nearly 13 million workers, lifting more than half a million people out of poverty.

The Child Tax Credit, or CTC, delivers a credit of up to $1,000 per child to families with children. The credit protected about 3 million people from poverty in 2015, including 1.6 million children. Because it is not fully refundable, however, the CTC misses the poorest children entirely, and only about 20 percent of the CTC’s benefits go to families who earn less than $30,000, compared with 60 percent of the EITC.

Expanding the CTC—as proposed by the Center for American Progress in a recent report—would ensure that the credit does not skip the families who need it most. The proposal would also create a supplemental credit—delivered monthly—for families with children younger than age 3. This would nearly double the number of children younger than age 17 who are lifted out of poverty by the CTC and would protect more than two-and-a-half times as many children younger than age 3 from poverty than does the current law.

Reduce hunger and food insecurity

Each year, SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, protect millions of struggling Americans from poverty, including children, individuals with disabilities, seniors, and low-wage working families. SNAP’s nutrition assistance also boosts health outcomes, educational attainment, and earnings over the long term. Currently, the value of SNAP benefits is based on the Thrifty Food Plan, the lowest-cost of the four food plans developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA. At an average of just $1.41 per person for each meal, SNAP benefits—while critical—provide only the “bare bones” of nutritional adequacy. Many families are unable or barely able to stretch these modest benefits until the end of the month: Recipients use nearly 80 percent of SNAP benefits within the first half of each month. Switching to the Low-Cost Food Plan, the second lowest-cost of the USDA’s four plans—would increase SNAP benefits 30 percent. This would dramatically reduce hunger, food insecurity, and poverty, as well as boost long-run economic mobility for struggling families.

End homelessness

Homelessness and housing instability are leading causes—and consequences—of poverty. On any given night in 2015, more than 560,000 Americans faced homelessness, a problem primarily caused by a lack of affordable housing. The housing voucher program plays a crucial role in keeping at-risk households stably housed, yet 3 in 4 eligible families receive no housing assistance due to scant funding.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Housing Commission calls for reforming and expanding the Housing Choice Voucher program in order to end homelessness in the United States. Their proposal would provide rental assistance to all 3 million currently unassisted renting households that are extremely low income and cost burdened, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing and utilities.

Allow all families to access high-quality child care for their children

Child care is an economic necessity for most families with children: 65 percent of children younger than age 6 have all of their available parents in the workforce. But its cost is prohibitive for many families and especially for low-income families. In 37 states and the District of Columbia, the annual cost of child care for an infant is more than half of what a full-time, minimum-wage worker in that state earns. Existing child care assistance reaches only a small portion of eligible families and is much lower than actual child care costs.

Unable to forego critical income from work, many parents have little choice but to seek out low-quality care, potentially putting their children’s health, safety, and development at risk. The Center for American Progress recently proposed a tax credit that would expand access to affordable high-quality child care, allowing more low-income parents to participate in the work force while promoting their children’s healthy development. High-quality child care is an investment in the nation’s human capital: It increases children’s school readiness and reduces the educational disparities—based on socioeconomic status—that can be predicted long before a child even starts kindergarten.

Conclusion

Radically reducing poverty in America may sound like a costly proposition. But compared with the billions of dollars that lawmakers give away to the wealthy each year, Congress could make a huge dent in poverty at a bargain price. What’s more, investments that reduce poverty today will provide enormous economic opportunity for generations to come. Prioritizing the nation’s struggling families is an investment Americans cannot afford not to make.

Phone calls like the one I received from my manager were far from atypical in my job. In addition to last-minute cancellations, my coworkers and I would wait until Friday evenings to receive our weekly schedules—which would begin less than two days later, on Sunday mornings. Even when we received notice of our schedules later than Friday evenings, we still had to be on time if we were scheduled for the 6 a.m. markdown shift on Sunday. We might also discover that we would be working just 12 hours in a week, even though the previous week we had worked for 20.  Last August, a few months before I left, the company publicly announced that it would provide all employees their schedules 14 days in advance by early 2016. But my former coworkers tell me that they still receive their schedules just 48 hours before the workweek starts. The ugly reality is that corporate promises—even widely publicized ones—do not ensure change.

The scheduling practices that continue to threaten my coworkers’ ability to make ends meet are hardly unique to my former employer. In fact, schedule volatility affects a staggering 90 percent of the retail workforce. And for the 35 percent of these workers who are parents, fluctuating hours seriously impede their best efforts to secure high-quality child care.

The practice of on-call scheduling is particularly disruptive to work-family balance. Someone who is on-call has to sit in schedule purgatory until her manager either clears her to stay home or asks her to come in—which can happen with as little as two hours’ notice. If she can’t scramble to find child care in that time (a difficult task given the scarcity of accessible, affordable care in this country), she may have to take a disciplinary strike for failing to report to work. If she accumulates too many strikes, she can be fired. Informal consequences like reduced hours or inconvenient shifts are not uncommon either. Although some major retailers have announced plans to end on-call scheduling, many still expect their employees to report to work with little notice and at any time of day (or night).

To make matters worse, only a few states and localities protect parents’ ability to request time off to care for their children. As a result, in most places, employees can be fired when family responsibilities make them unavailable to work a shift. In November 2014, some year-round Kmart employees reported that they had to be available to work on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, or else risked termination. Even though child care on a federal holiday is nearly impossible to find, the ultimatum stood: work on Thanksgiving, or lose your job.

The result is that parents with unpredictable work schedules are much more likely to rely on home-based child care providers, relatives, or both. A patchwork of informal care arrangements can deprive children of the educational and developmental benefits associated with high-quality child care. Early childhood education is a springboard for educational attainment, economic mobility, and social well-being for children in low-income families. Yet, schedule instability in low-wage industries constrains parents’ ability to position their children for future success.

To help low-income parents afford child care, the federal Child Care and Development Fund provides billions of dollars in subsidies—but the program is far from perfect. It’s funded through block grants, meaning that states have the power to impose work requirements for parents who have no control over their hours; states can also make the application process cumbersome through requiring employers to corroborate parents’ schedules and income with additional documents. (It should be noted that none of these requirements exist at the federal level.) Conservative policymakers tout block grants as an ideal way to tailor policies to fit the unique needs of different states, but in reality, they keep high quality child care out of reach for many working parents.

But even when child care is affordable for retail workers, it often is unobtainable in practice. Just 3 percent of center-based child care providers are open on weekends, and even fewer are open after 7 p.m. Meanwhile, only 44 percent of retail workers work regular daytime hours, which leaves the majority of the retail workforce with very limited options for child care. To complicate things further, providers often require advance payment for full-time enrollment, which is often impossible for parents whose hours can fluctuate by 50 percent from week to week.

None of this is inevitable. Policies that recognize and empower working parents are crucial to reining in unchecked schedule volatility in the retail industry and beyond. The Schedules That Work Act, introduced in the Senate last summer, offers much-needed, common sense protections. The bill requires employers to modify schedules based on employees’ child care needs, and prevents employees who use their right to request schedule modifications from adverse outcomes like pay cuts and termination. It guarantees four hours of pay if workers are sent home early, and eliminates unpaid “on-call” shifts. Finally, the bill mandates employers to provide clear and advance notice of work schedules.

Overall, this legislation would make it easier for my former coworkers who are parents to provide their children with the long-term benefits of consistent, high-quality care. Retail workers are expected to take initiative and be proactive problem solvers—not only as workers, but also as parents. It’s only fair that the law require our employers to do the same.

Certainly, if you ask people what they think about making high-quality, affordable early childhood care and enrichment opportunities available for everyone—not mandating them, but simply making them available—few, if any, would say they are opposed. This consensus is in part due to mounting research in neuroscience, public health, economics and social science that supports a simple conclusion: investing in early childhood benefits the development, wellbeing, and long-term health of children. We also know how to create, scale and support these social and educational programs—Head Start, for example—and make them accessible.

Nevertheless, not all children have an opportunity to experience high-quality early childcare, for the simple reason that we have chosen not to support universal access. So why aren’t we committed to ensuring these opportunities?

Our political discussions about early childhood tend to center on parents’ choices and responsibilities—on the need for parents to make good decisions for their young children. But wouldn’t a tighter safety net of opportunities and support make good decisions easier, and make parents less likely to stumble in their efforts?

Instead of casting aspersions on parents, we need a new conversation—one that places children and what is optimal for them at the center.

That’s what The Raising of America—a new, five-part documentary series—is trying to do. I’m proud to be a part of the film, which probes how conditions faced by young children and their families form the foundation for future success—both in school and in life.

In exploring the prolific data about the positive effects of quality early care on health, The Raising of America brings to light the consequences of our failure to provide adequate support for parents raising young children.

Our Experiences Shape Our Biology

In recent years, as the film shows, we’ve seen a gradual shift in the way we understand health. Medical professionals are now examining health outcomes through a more holistic lens. What we’ve learned is that health is profoundly influenced by socioeconomic factors seemingly outside of the healthcare system.

Study after study has shown that our experiences—positive as well as negative—influence the ways our biological systems develop and operate. We also know that children who live in high-stress homes and environments with a lot of concentrated disadvantage are most likely to have adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. A higher prevalence of ACEs can affect children’s emotional regulation, which in turn can impair optimal learning. A child who has difficulty regulating his or her emotions is not likely to be able to stay in the classroom and learn. And a child who drops out of school is less likely to succeed in life.

We’ve come to understand that where you live matters to your health. In a neighborhood that suffers from chronic poverty—with a lower ratio of caregivers to kids, low employment, unsafe housing, community violence and physical decay—the odds are stacked against optimal health and development.

Yet with all of this knowledge, we still haven’t bridged the gap between data and practice by offering universal early care and enrichment opportunities.

The Choice We’ve Made

It strikes me that as a society we have accepted the notion that the challenges parents face are all “just part of raising a child”—that it’s not imperative for all children to have access to the high-quality early care that they need to succeed.

I would love to give working parents a sense that they are not alone in their experience—that there are countless others like them who want to be great parents but are struggling to give their children what they need. This sense of community in itself can be powerful and galvanize positive action.

What if together we called for the consideration of health and wellbeing in all of our public policy choices? Adopting this new framework might help us understand that policies that support safe neighborhoods promote not only crime reduction, but also physical and mental health and educational success.

Families cannot meet the demands of both our economy and raising children alone. It’s my hope that the larger conversation we’re launching—through ongoing research and with The Raising of America—will prompt a closer look at how we can develop an opportunity agenda for our nation’s children, and steer a course that puts the needs of children front and center.

I hope this is the moment when society looks at the status of young children and declares that it does not have to be this way, that we can change the experience of childhood. Let’s get started.

While hunger is difficult for any family to endure, those with very young children seem to be the hardest hit. Researchers estimate that half of all children under age 3 live in low-income or poor households. The challenge of finding child care that is both trustworthy and affordable makes it all the more difficult for parents who are trying to work their way out of poverty.  For families with employed mothers living in poverty and making child care payments, 36 percent of the family’s monthly income is spent on child care.

As a result of these high costs, too many families are forced to choose between child care, meals, and other basic necessities.  But the CACFP indirectly subsidizes child care by providing healthy meals and snacks for young children at care facilities. By providing these resources, the tradeoffs that most low-income families make in securing child care become a little easier to manage.

Given that child care is now more expensive than in-state college tuition in many states, the affordability of quality child care should be the prime focus of any CACFP reform effort. The law that authorizes this program – which served nearly 2 billion meals last year, mostly to young children – is scheduled to expire this September. As Congress considers the next Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, it marks an opportunity to renew and strengthen our public investment in quality child care and education. The CACFP not only makes quality child care more affordable for countless families, it also encourages school readiness for children who are at the greatest risk of developmental delays – health outcomes that are often connected to frequent hunger and food insecurity.

A few key changes to CACFP would allow the program to reach more children and families who need to access these benefits. Current reimbursement rates for the sites providing the meals are inadequate and out of step with rising food costs, especially as quality child care centers strive to serve healthier meals. Moreover, since many parents are now working longer and nontraditional hours, the next Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act should allow three meals per day to be reimbursed by the CACFP, instead of the current two meals.

Administrative procedures also need to be updated. Congress should reform the CACFP area eligibility test so that more sites are able to participate in the program. Further, we should recognize that CACFP is the direct point of contact between government and our most vulnerable young citizens, and use the program to ensure safe child care settings that promote best practices.

By taking these modest steps we can expect to see more accessible, affordable, quality child care centers. And if parents can count on these programs to keep their kids healthy and secure, they’re better able to work and support their families.

Editor’s note: To learn more, read “How the Child and Adult Care Food Program Improves Early Childhood Education”.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.”

Today, 150 years after the end of slavery, every other black baby in America is poor. Every third Hispanic baby is poor. Nearly every fourth rural child is poor. All told, there are 14.7 million poor children and 6.5 million extremely poor children in the United States of America. It is a national disgrace that such an unconscionably large number of children are homeless, hungry and living in poverty in a country with the world’s largest economy.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

It is way past time for a critical mass of Americans to confront the hypocrisy of America’s pretension to be a fair playing field while almost 15 million children languish in poverty. Sadly, politics too often trumps good policy, moral decency and responsibility to the next generation and the nation’s future.

But the Children’s Defense Fund has just released a groundbreaking report, Ending Child Poverty Now, showing how — for the first time — we can massively reduce this scourge. The CDF’s plan would cut child poverty overall by 60 percent, shrink black child poverty by 72 percent, and improve economic circumstances for 97 percent of poor children – all at a cost of $77.2 billion a year, a relative pittance.

By pursuing these policies immediately, we would not only improve the lives and futures of millions of children; over the long term, we would save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Child poverty costs our country about half a trillion dollars a year, six times more than what it would cost to significantly reduce child poverty and improve the future for millions of children, their parents and the country.

In its report, the CDF has identified multiple ways to pay for these changes without increasing the federal deficit, such as closing tax loopholes and cutting corporate subsidies. The report concludes that by investing another two percent of the federal budget to improve programs and policies we already know work – such as parental employment, making work pay and ensuring that children’s basic needs are met – the solution to ending child poverty is within reach.

Children have only one childhood — they can’t wait. It’s time to act with urgency and, together, ensure that all God’s children have the opportunity to reach their potential. If we love America, and we love our children, we must all stand against the excessive greed that tramples the millions of children entrusted to our care.

Read the report at the Children’s Defense Fund website, and sign up to receive updates about how you can fight for a real plan to reduce child poverty by 60 percent right now.

A new study entitled Worth Work, STILL Unlivable Wages finds that wages in the child care industry as so low that many providers live in poverty.  The mean hourly wage of a child care worker in 2013 was $10.33 an hour or $21,490 annually. This puts child care workers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ lowest income tier along with parking lot attendants and dry-cleaners, meaning that most child care workers live in poverty.

The combination of low wages and the rising cost of living means that many child care workers aren’t paid enough to meet their families’ most basic needs.  In fact, more than 46 percent of child care workers are in families using one of the four major social support programs—almost double the rate of use in the U.S. workforce overall. Poverty wages for child care workers is a problem in and of itself, but the impact extends well beyond workers. The 12 million children who attend child care are affected as well.

Child care workers who endure the stressors of living in poverty are more likely to experience toxic stress, depression, and chronic health issues. As the number of children spending time in child care settings has increased so too has our knowledge of the link between adult caregiving and early childhood brain development. Study after study has shown the connection between better-paid staff and higher quality care. The instability and stress experienced by caregivers dealing with economic insecurity or poverty shapes their ability to provide enriching and nurturing environments for children. Often, it can result in a decreased ability to provide supportive spaces for children to develop and learn.

Importantly, high quality care is often most powerful in the lives of low-income children and children of color who already enter school behind their wealthy and/or white peers. But we also know that low-income children are more likely to be in low quality child care settings. Research shows that children who attend low quality child care settings—with high turnover or high numbers of stressed out staff—are less competent in language and social development. This means our most vulnerable children are often facing stress from multiple sources.

Ultimately, we must do something to better empower the 2 million women earning a living in this sector. Changing the course is far from impossible. Decades ago, the Department of Defense made major changes to its internal child care system, including paying child care workers on par with other employees with similar education and qualifications. This reform increased pay by about 76 percent over the past 25 years. As a result, they see far less turnover and consistently receive higher quality ratings.

It’s time that we pay those caring for our children a fair wage. And that starts with parents asking the question: how much does my child care provider make? Does caring for my family force her family to live in poverty?

“I realized that even though my daughter was the one in the program, our whole family was benefiting,” he says. “The teachers taught us to be hands-on parents, and to set aside family time to eat together, talk, and share together.”

The program provided more than just child care, it helped the whole family.

For low-income families like Israel’s, poverty complicates every aspect of their daily lives, from holding a job, to finding transportation, to raising healthy children. For these families, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent executive order raising the hourly minimum wage from $11.90 to $13.13 for employees at projects that receive more than $1 million in city financing is an important step forward.  Contrary to misconceptions about people in poverty, these families work, and they work hard. In fact, there are 265,000 low-income families in New York City with at least one working parent. The new wage will increase the annual income of thousands of workers from $16,640 to $27,310, lifting a family of four above the federal poverty line.

While an increased minimum wage will be an enormous help to struggling families, it isn’t enough. We need to invest in other work supports that ease the economic strain on families and create thriving communities.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that to achieve a “modest living standard,” a family of four needs $94,676 to live in New York City, including over $2,000 for child care each month. When even middle class parents are “crushed by the cost of child care,” you know that low-income families are feeling the pain even more. In the state of New York, the average cost of an infant child care center consumes 58% of the state median income for a single mother. One study found that child care is the single greatest expense among low-income families in the city.

That is why access to early childhood education, quality childcare, and after-school programs should be implemented hand-in-hand with minimum wage raises—they serve as a multiplier of a family’s earned income because parents don’t have to pay for costly or unsafe child care, and they also allow parents to go to work. The proof is in the data: More than 70% of New York City parents with kids in an after-school program said that the program made it easier for them to keep their jobs; that they missed less work; and that they were able to work more hours. Low-income parents with child care subsidies are also less likely to have child care disruptions that hold back their careers or result in job loss.

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These programs are an investment in our future too. The Child Center of NY works with some of the most impoverished communities in New York City, in neighborhoods like South Jamaica, Corona, and Far Rockaway.  Every day we meet hardworking parents who seek our services because they want their children to learn and succeed—to interact positively with their peers, form relationships with adult mentors, and learn outside of the classroom too.  We also work with whole families to help them achieve their goals too.

When Israel came to our Head Start program it was perfectly clear that he knew the value of hard work.  His own parents had worked long hours at multiple jobs when he was growing up.

“They didn’t have much time to spend with us,” he says. “I wanted more for my family than that.”

Our staff encouraged him to be involved with his daughter and her class. He began helping in the classroom and encouraged other fathers to do the same. He ran for president of the program’s Parent Council and won, and became more involved with his children at home too.

By the time both of his children had completed our Head Start program, Israel had developed his leadership skills, which in turn helped him find investors in the community so he could open a barbershop. Now, five years later, Israel owns the shop—a neighborhood institution just a few blocks away from the Head Start program. He has eight employees and earns more money working fewer hours than he did prior to starting his own business. He spends the extra time with his children and is currently planning to renovate and expand his shop.

Israel says The Child Center gave him the confidence and the means to strengthen his relationships with his children and to grow his business. In our poorest neighborhoods, there are countless men and women who want to do the same—to work hard and make a better life for their families and communities.

Decent wages and quality affordable childcare will create new opportunities to do both.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify which workers will receive the New York City wage increase.

Most states operate CCDF as a voucher program.  Eligible parents use vouchers to offset the cost of child care—the fee for each family is determined on a sliding scale basis set by each state. Child care centers that accept vouchers are paid through a combination of voucher reimbursements and family fees.

Many states are now attempting to improve quality in their CCDF child care programs through “quality rating and improvement systems” (QRIS).  While QRIS guidelines vary among states, they often feature a rating system based on progressively higher quality standards.  In many states, the higher a center is rated, the more money a center receives for each voucher.  By tying voucher reimbursement rates to these ratings, the system is designed to incentivize and ultimately fund quality improvements for participating centers.

However, achieving a higher rating in order to receive more money requires a significant capital investment. We at the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative (MLICCI) are concerned that many childcare facilities serving low-income families—already struggling to offer desperately needed services to even a fraction of the eligible children—cannot afford the initial investment that is necessary to achieve higher QRIS ratings. It amounts to a Catch-22: for too many centers, the QRIS incentive system is in fact an insurmountable financial obstacle to receiving the financial assistance they need to serve vulnerable children.

To test this concern, we conducted Step-Up, a project designed to demonstrate what centers serving low-income families would have to do to achieve higher quality ratings and greater reimbursement rates in Mississippi. While QRIS systems vary by state, our findings are relevant for any state that finances quality improvements through boosted reimbursement rates—which is the vast majority of states.

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Step-Up selected 16 representative centers from around the state, all serving low-income working families.  We walked the centers through the QRIS requirements and documented what actions were necessary to attain higher quality ratings. Together, we developed comprehensive, detailed quality improvement plans; and the centers received significant financial resources—provided by MLICCI through a grant from the Kellogg Foundation—to fund the improvements.

The interventions worked. All participating centers achieved higher quality rankings. But it was also very clear—and hardly surprising—that low-income childcare facilities with limited resources never would have been able to make these quality improvements without Step-Up funding.  Average cost? $11,475 per classroom, which included monies to buy furniture and equipment, and renovate interior classroom spaces and exterior playground spaces.

In addition to requiring an initial investment that is often prohibitive, the QRIS system has a second serious flaw: its reimbursement rates for vouchers are significantly below what is needed to fund QRIS improvements. In Mississippi, the rates begin at just 62% of the state’s market rate for child care. When a center improves to a 2-star rating, it receives a reimbursement of 69% of the market rate; 3-stars merit a 79% reimbursement rate. Even at the highest 5-star rating—which only 11 out of 1,600 licensed centers in Mississippi have attained—a center receives only 87% of the state’s market rate for child care.

Finally, reimbursement rates are paid only for active child care subsidies. With only 1 in 6 eligible children receiving a voucher, the number of higher reimbursements is simply too small to finance the quality improvements. In fact, we estimate that it would have taken about 4 years for the child care centers in the Step-Up project to recoup their initial investment.

Quality improvements are indeed important—important enough to warrant the additional investment required.  But we cannot keep pretending that these improvements can be paid for out of the current pool of meager resources.  If we do, then even fewer children will be served by CCDF.  Child care centers serving low-income families will either opt-out if the quality improvements are voluntary, or be priced-out of existence if they are mandatory.  Either of these outcomes will exacerbate the struggles of the working poor.

This nation needs to do more than just talk about the need for quality, affordable childcare for all children—it needs to make a real commitment.

Let’s flesh this out: it’s worth a reminder that poverty is defined as living at or below the poverty line, which for a family of four in 2013 was $23,834. Yep, that is not a typo—there isn’t supposed to be a “6” where the “2” is. Not sure how anyone makes a living with less than $30K but that is another topic for another day.

Now back to the numbers: 14.5 percent of Americans lived in poverty in 2013—that represents more than 45 million people, including 13 million Latinos.  While this poverty rate is lower than in 2012, it is a decrease of only .5 percent.  Among Latinos the decrease was a respectable 2 percentage points—down from 25.6 percent in 2012 to 23.5 percent in 2013.

The Latino child poverty rate also fell for a third year in a row. In 2013, the poverty rate among Hispanic kids was 30.4 percent, compared to 33.8 in 2012 and 34.1 in 2011.  But it’s clear we still have a long way to go: there are 5.4 million Hispanic children in poverty, more than any other group; and our kids have among the highest poverty rates of any racial and ethnic group at more than 30 percent.

While the economy improved in 2013 that hasn’t translated into significantly better economic outcomes for the low-income workers or the middle class.   Median family income stayed virtually the same between 2012 and 2013, continuing its 14-year decline due in large part to stagnant wages.  Although income for Latinos did rise from $39,572 to 40,963 in 2013, it is still lower than the $43,025 that Hispanics earned in 2006.

It is also worth underscoring that millions of Latinos are working at poverty-level wages.  While the unemployment rate for Hispanics declined between September 2012 and August 2013—from 8.9 percent to 7.5 percent—more than 40 percent of Latino workers earn poverty level wages.

These poverty numbers are not a reality that we can’t change.  As my colleagues Rebecca Vallas and Melissa Boteach write there are policy solutions that can reverse these trends. For example, raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would benefit 6.8 million Latinos; good jobs—with fair pay and benefits such as paid family and medical leave, and paid sick days—would also make a difference in lifting people out of poverty.  Moreover, key investments in education, job training and child care would improve the livelihoods of all Americans, including Latinos.   And let’s not forget immigration reform to help workers who are already contributing to this nation’s economy earn a good living that supports their families.

But Congress seems intent on making things worse. In 2013, this Congress enacted across-the-board cuts in education, job training, and child care services, alongside reductions in nutrition assistance, housing, and other vital programs for low-income families. Congress must change course and invest in job creation, pass comprehensive immigration reform, raise the minimum wage, and enact measures to improve the economic security of all families.

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For Latinos the stakes are high.  While the reduction in poverty in our community is good news during an otherwise disappointing time (given the lack of movement on issues that we care about—like immigration reform), much work remains. This new set of numbers are yet another reminder that we need to grow our power and influence so that we elect leaders in Congress who will focus on creating and strengthening the ladder of opportunity for all Americans—including Latinos.

Earlier this week, the House took a step in the right direction by passing a bill to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which is the primary source of funding to help subsidize child care costs for low-income families. Given that the Senate passed a similar bill last spring, it’s likely to see the President’s desk soon. The program—last modified in 1996 as part of welfare reform—is badly in need of updating to reflect that child care is not only a work support, but also plays an important role in preparing children for school.

The bill makes important changes to the child care system, requiring minimum health and safety standards, background checks for providers, regular monitoring visits, and information to parents so they are aware of past violations. Such changes are long overdue: a number of children have died or sustained serious injuries in child care programs because basic health and safety measures were not in place. Child care standards are also embarrassingly low when compared to service industries like beauty salons and even pet grooming. The bill will apply mostly to children in publicly subsidized child care, but is likely to help raise minimum health and safety standards at all child care facilities and prevent taxpayer dollars from supporting unsafe child care.

In addition, the bill provides some stability by allowing children to remain in the program for a year. Under the current system, families often receive child care assistance for a few months at a time because of a small change in income or job schedule, or job loss. These changes will promote continuous access to early childhood programs for children, thereby helping parents sustain employment.

Child care reauthorization also reflects bipartisan support for early childhood programs—a rarity, given today’s gridlock. With just a week left before Congress adjourns for campaign season, the fact that Republicans and Democrats worked together—and across both houses of Congress—signals that early childhood education and promoting safety and quality is a priority for both parties.

While this bill marks an important step forward, there is still much work to do in order to provide affordable access to high-quality child care. The current child care subsidy program reaches just one in six eligible children. And while this bill puts minimum health and safety standards in place that will cost money to implement, there is no funding to defray costs for states. That means that improvements will come out of states’ block grant funds and reduce the number of children they can serve.  If we really want to expand the number of children who receive quality child care, we need to increase funding and tie those increases to high-quality programs.

Without additional funding, states also cannot raise the assistance amounts for families. Current levels are typically too low to support access to high-quality programs that effectively prepare children for school. With the average annual cost of a child care center ranging from $4,000 to $16,000 per year and rising, we run the risk of families turning to the unregulated and sometimes illegal child care market, which is of questionable quality.

It’s also time to move the child care conversation past health and safety standards and consider how to help families access high-quality child care—child care that goes beyond safe, custodial care to support children’s development and school readiness.

We often talk about early learning in the context of efforts to expand access to preschool. However, after decades of brain research, we know that children begin learning from birth. For better or worse, children are absorbing their environment and learning from their experiences immediately. Child care programs that are safe but fail to provide nurturing relationships with providers and enriching environments for establishing cognitive and socio-emotional skills will undermine our collective investment in child care assistance and efforts to promote future social mobility.

Given that most children spend a good deal of time in child care programs before they enter kindergarten, failing to provide a quality early learning environment is a missed opportunity. Children (and parents) don’t care if a program is called child care, Head Start, preschool, or school. To artificially talk about preschool and child care in different veins at the federal policy level is a disservice to the 12 million children who spend much of their days in child care programs. It’s also a disservice to families that would like to attend programs like state preschool and Head Start, but have work schedules that don’t allow for part-day early childhood programs.

Hopefully we’ll get another opportunity to reauthorize CCDBG before another 18 years passes. And next time around, we’ll be ready to have a discussion about how federal funds can support early learning and working families in high-quality child care programs.

Every kid deserves a fair shot in life and that starts with a quality education, early on. So how are we doing?

The short and immediate, look-just-beyond-your nose answer is: not good. Last year, for the first time in a decade, fewer 4-year-olds had access to pre-K than the year before – a modest nationwide decline of 9,000 kids in all, according to the 2013 State Preschool Yearbook, published by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

But the long-term forecast is a good deal rosier. In state after state, legislators are waking up to more favorable fiscal outlooks at the same time that new coalitions of educators, social scientists, law enforcement officials, pediatricians, nurses and others are singing the praises of early intervention.

The list of states that have made progress in establishing pre-K is growing longer: Alabama. Arizona. Georgia. Illinois. Maryland. Oklahoma. In other places, like Pennsylvania, the debate is raging. Pollsters Celinda Lake and Christine Matthews recently outlined the debate in an op-ed published in Pennsylvania:

“What we are seeing around the country in the campaigns of many candidates this election season is broad support for access to high-quality pre-k. It was a central issue in the recent New York City mayor’s race, and it’s a simmering one in the hotly contested race for governor in Texas. Why now? And why in such very different political environments?

“Voters strongly value education and believe that pre-K education helps children arrive to Kindergarten (and beyond) ready to learn. Voters believe pre-K can improve a child’s social skills, which helps them through grade school. They see the long-term benefits in terms of better test scores, graduation rates, and lifetime earnings and employment.

“They overwhelmingly agree that the more kids who have access to high-quality pre-k, the better it is for ALL students in kindergarten classrooms, so teachers aren’t stretched doing remediation and classrooms aren’t disrupted.”

Politically, the issue seems to have resonance for two reasons. First, at the local level, education historically has not been viewed as a partisan issue. In fact, if you look at the three states with the highest enrollment of 4-year-olds in pre-K, one state is decidedly red (Oklahoma), one state is decidedly blue (Vermont), and one state is decidedly mixed (Florida).

Second, bipartisan support has emerged – and is strengthening – for pre-K. Again we turn to Lake and Matthews:

“Why does this seem to be a political moment for pre-k? The political will to invest in high-quality pre-k around the nation may also reflect what our research in Pennsylvania tells us: there is broad bi-partisan support for pre-k.

“Eighty-three (83) percent of Democrats, 61 percent of Independents, and 56 percent of Republicans favor ensuring every 3 and 4 year old in Pennsylvania has access to voluntary, high quality pre-K programs. In fact a majority of Pennsylvania voters see the benefit as so clear that they support increased state funding for such programs (59 percent) – Pennsylvania voters, like those in many other states, recognize the results justify the investment.”

So how do we bring this home and make universal pre-K a reality in the U.S.? It is only going to happen through a combination of public education and individual empowerment. The public education is happening – we see it in the letters to the editor and op-eds that, with increased regularity, are appearing in publications across the country.

The individual empowerment will happen as a result of neighbor talking to neighbor and groups that are fighting for pre-K (like Fair Share Education Fund) providing ordinary Americans with a platform to demand action. And it will happen when Americans realize that the benefits of pre-K go well beyond childhood education – they’re good for families and good for the economy.

Just ask Jill McCain Santiago, a lawyer and mother of two who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Massachusetts Fair Share recruited McCain Santiago to tell her story of how pre-K allowed her to go back to work, expand her law practice and hire additional employees. “We’re so thankful to have both boys in safe, caring learning environments that are helping them prepare for kindergarten and beyond,” McCain Santiago said. “This has allowed me to grow my business … I’ve been able to hire two employees and serve more families.  I strongly believe that all families deserve the fair shot that we have been lucky enough to get.”

If we make sure that every child entering pre-kindergarten has been properly screened for significant health conditions, we can treat and manage some of the conditions – like asthma and vision problems – that, unrecognized or under-treated, can jeopardize a child’s likelihood of succeeding in school.

There may be a broad assumption that every child gets a complete medical assessment as a requirement for school entry – but this is far from reality.  The fact is that millions of children are educationally at-risk because of a host of medical challenges that are easily treated.

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If standardized health screening and follow-up are mandated in any new universal pre-k legislation, educators and health providers – in partnership – can dramatically improve the education and health trajectories of students.

President Obama has placed expansion of pre-K programs at the center of his social policy agenda in successive State of the Union addresses – and his focus on this issue is already making a difference.  The budget deal reached by Congress in December ensures that Early Head Start and Head Start will receive a $1 billion increase on top of a restoration of sequestration cuts. Funding was also added for competitive grants to states to help them expand pre-K programs. Thirty states have now chosen to expand access to universal pre-k through state run programs.

In November 2013, Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions introduced the Strong Start for America’s Children bill. A marginally bipartisan companion bill has also been introduced on the House side. With billions in new funding to states, Strong Start proposes the expansion of comprehensive, high-quality pre-K programs that include health screenings and referrals for vision, oral and mental health conditions. These provisions stand solidly on the preponderance of research which demonstrates a correlation between persistent health-related barriers to education and poor performance in the classroom.

Still, the provisions to identify important health conditions among young children entering school don’t go far enough.  We also need to make sure that children are not educationally impaired by other conditions like chronic anemia, hearing deficiencies, behavioral problems and so on. And beyond identifying these health barriers, it is essential to provide guidance and resources to do follow-up and management of identified medical challenges.

Federal, state and local governments have an opportunity to pass early education laws that mandate a focus on health care, as well as access to education.  Maybe Congress will put aside partisan and political grandstanding and pass a popular bill that funds universal, comprehensive pre-K for all children as well as screening for and management of health-related barriers to learning—it would be a major step forward in definitively addressing chronic poverty.

The research shows that it clearly does.  Decades of studies, including the most recent Head Start Impact Study, have found that at the end of Head Start, prior to kindergarten, the program shows wide-ranging positive effects on children and families from language and pre-reading abilities to parenting skills.  And even though Head Start dates back to 1965, the latest research has proven its creators right about many basic principles.

Since its inception, Head Start’s core has been a comprehensive approach to high-quality early education and a focus on the whole child—recognizing the importance of social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. Head Start children receive medical and developmental screenings and subsequent treatment for identified concerns. They receive regular medical and dental care. And their families receive parenting education, health education and support services connecting them to education and jobs. Current research tells us that this full array of services is what early education programs should offer to have a positive effect on vulnerable children.

But it’s not just the comprehensive approach that makes Head Start a leader.  Head Start’s rigorous quality standards and monitoring processes, commitment to serving children with disabilities, and leadership in serving children from diverse backgrounds all make it a model of a high-quality program and a foundational component of our early learning system.

Head Start’s history of evaluation, innovation, and self-improvement is just as extraordinary. It has been the subject of intensive research for five decades and much of what has been learned has been incorporated into the program through quality improvement.

Head Start has evolved over time in various ways to meet families’ needs for full-day or year-round programs or to respond to local community needs with innovative models. Program standards, monitoring, and professional development have all been revised based on research and evaluation. Most notably, the 2007 Congressional reauthorization of Head Start increased the focus on school readiness for children and established higher educational requirements for teachers. New assessment procedures require a review of teacher-child interactions, a critical component of any early education experience.

Drawing on this history, researchers have taken a careful look at what about Head Start works and what can be improved based on the findings of the recent national impact study and the broader Head Start research.

So why is there any debate at all regarding the effectiveness of Head Start?

The answer is simple—the impact study has been selectively mined for talking points.  The study found that right after leaving Head Start, children did better than their peers. It also found cognitive gains disappeared during the early elementary years. There are many possible reasons, including uneven quality in Head Start programs, uneven quality in elementary schools that poor children enter after Head Start, and the need for higher-intensity interventions than the 9-month Head Start program tested in the study. There is also much more to learn about how to sustain immediate gains for poor children over time.

Importantly, the study results do not necessarily mean that children won’t benefit later from Head Start. A robust body of research finds that while children in Head Start and other high-quality early education programs may lose immediate gains, they still experience improved outcomes later in life.  This is important:  the large payoffs to early education that researchers have found for high-quality programs in the form of increased education, employment, and earnings can happen even when there is no immediate evidence that children are doing better in school. Here too, we have more to learn.

As we deepen our understanding of the complexities of high-quality early education and its impacts, Head Start should continue its legacy of continuous quality improvement to respond to the needs of poor children. As with any program intended to advance outcomes for our children, we should learn and adapt as new research expands our knowledge base. But labeling the intervention a failure based on one study is neither sensible nor advantageous to preparing poor children for school, a goal that benefits everyone in the country.

But the biggest problem with the simplistic talking points framing the Head Start debate isn’t a selective reading of the research.  It is the distraction from what matters most:  the persistence of child poverty, which affects a quarter of our youngest children. The immediate impacts of Head Start are clear. We shouldn’t ignore or reject decades of reputable research.  Whether Head Start works isn’t close to the right question.  Instead, we should ask why only a fraction of eligible children are being served. Why, when we know what works, can we not make a significant investment to put a generation of young children in poverty on a better and brighter path?

It is our public will that we must question.

Until recently, my son attended a childcare program that he and I loved.  He was given instruction and pushed to learn more.  He attended the same program his sister did and has been there since shortly after birth.  Being at the same center gave my son a sense of stability and security that allowed him to excel.  I am a proud mother and I love to talk about how smart my kids are.  I believe that is partly a result of the quality of the care and instruction they have received starting at an early age.

Unfortunately, due to financial reasons, Tasir had to leave his childcare center at the end of the fall.  I lost my job and had to rely on cash assistance to make ends meet but I lost my subsidy that helped to pay for childcare.  It broke my heart to have to move my son from the care he loved and relied on simply because I could not afford it.  Losing my job and then my subsidy not only cost me but it has cost my son.

I have seen the benefits of high quality childcare in the education of my daughter.  Asyiah is a smart girl. She wants to learn and do well at school.  I believe this is a result of the instruction and stable care she received in the first years of life.  She has a strong foundation to build upon.

Since losing our childcare subsidy, my son, Tasir, has had nowhere to go. For four months I have been piecing together care with a network of relatives and neighbors while I looked for work.  I know I am lucky to have people to care for my son – otherwise I have no idea how I would be able to find work again.  The loss of the childcare subsidy is not only a snowball effect from a lost job, but it is also an obstacle to getting any other job.  Without care for my son how am I able to find a new job?  It is a vicious cycle that too many families are stuck in.

While I am grateful that Tasir is safe and fed with my relatives and friends, this is not the stable care he was accustomed to and he’s not learning anything.  At his old childcare center, Tasir engaged with children his age and learned new things each day.  Now I am just focused on making sure he is safe.  I want him to excel but right now our situation is not giving him any tools to help him prepare for school next year.   My son cannot redo these last few months. They will always be a time of lost potential.

I know the importance of early education.  I did not benefit from such programs and I do not want my kids to ever fall behind, or feel left behind.  No child should miss the opportunity to learn because his or her parents lack the money to afford it.  My daughter or son could be a doctor, lawyer, or even the next president of the United States, but without education, without a strong foundation, I fear they will not get there.  That my struggles could impact my children’s future keeps me up at night.

Today, I am happy to say that I have a new job.  Ironically I am now working at a childcare center.  With my new job I am hopeful that I will be able to get my subsidy back and be able to afford care for my son.  But there is no guarantee that I can get my son back in the same program, meaning this disruption in his life might be permanent.

No child should be prevented from reaching his or her potential because the caregiver lacks the funding.  I hope that by sharing my story, I can show the need for high-quality, affordable childcare for all families. Asyiah, Tasir and all children deserve the opportunity to reach their potential.