We can and should provide for providers
By Cristi Carman, Natalie Renew, and Meghan Salas Atwell
Early in spring of 2023, RAPID helped to convene a Workforce Data Collaborative,* a group of leaders and representatives from organizations committed to learning, sharing, and advancing data about the child care workforce.
Our organizations have been seeing and hearing from child care providers about the significant and ongoing challenges the workforce is experiencing, and we want to raise awareness about the need for sustained support for this essential workforce.
When RAPID began gathering information from child care providers in early 2021, the nation was still reeling from a worldwide pandemic which forced child care programs in the U.S. to close their doors, dramatically shift their operations, and that introduced new challenges. RAPID’s Child Care Survey is a monthly survey of diverse child care providers from 50 states including center directors, center teachers, home-based providers, and family, friend, and neighbor caregivers who support families. In those early months of the RAPID Child Care Survey, we learned that providers were experiencing high rates of hunger, economic hardship, and stress.
These challenges result in hardships for the workforce that, more than two years later, persist.
RAPID’s data reveal high rates of financial hardship among providers; 44% of providers are experiencing difficulty paying for basic needs like food, housing, utilities. When RAPID looked into specific areas of hardship, we found that 1 in 3 providers are experiencing hunger — including skipping meals, not having enough money to purchase food, and not being able to afford balanced meals — and 43% of providers are worried they won’t be able to pay their rent or mortgage in the coming month.
Other surveys of the workforce have similarly reflected the challenges that the field is facing and anticipating. NAEYC's early care and education field surveys gather insights from center directors, center teachers, and family child care providers periodically. Data from NAEYC’s October 2022 survey of more than 12,000 members of the field revealed that, in the context of these ongoing challenges, many providers have already left or are considering leaving the field, including 37% of family child care providers, putting further strain on an already precarious child care system.
Meanwhile, for those who stay, ongoing material hardship and related stress on early childhood educators is a cause for concern; we know that educators and caregivers are best able to meet the developmental needs of young children when they are emotionally available, free of stress, and well-resourced to make caring connections, inspire curiosity, and promote learning.
The American Rescue Plan Act child care relief funds responded to the immediate pandemic-related crisis and buoyed programs with much-needed resources. Both RAPID and NAEYC surveys found that a significant portion of providers reported that they would not have been able to remain open without child care relief funds. Providers used relief funds to quite literally keep the lights on, through mortgage and utility payments and payroll, as well as for cleaning supplies, program site improvements, and other essential needs and investments.
With much of this funding exhausted/spent, providers have been worried about how they will continue to operate their programs and make ends meet personally. The ability to stay open is also threatened by staffing shortages that will get worse as providers need to reduce bonus and wage enhancements funded by pandemic aid.
The lack of funding for child care providers will have impacts on families, who are already struggling to find and afford child care.
In March of 2022, RAPID found that 91% of parents seeking child care were having difficulty finding it. Providers in the NAEYC survey reveal that the end of stabilization funds will result in 43% of child care center directors and 37% of family child care providers raising their tuition rates.
Data from an October 2023 collaboration between RAPID and NAEYC show that many of the challenges that providers anticipated as a result of the end of federal support for child care are now unfolding; rates that parents are paying for care have gone up, programs have had to cut wages and cannot sustain previous wage increases, and they are serving fewer children than when federal relief dollars were available. Parents are already experiencing job disruptions, financial hardship compounded by high child care payments, and stress that will rise with continued lack of action on child care policy.
Child care providers are essential to meeting young children’s social, emotional, and development needs. And the pandemic underscored how reliant families, communities, and our national economy are on the child care system.
To ensure that all families and children can access high-quality, reliable care, and that all child care providers can truly thrive, we need sustained investments in child care.
How can legislators and other leaders work towards this goal? The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment outlines five essential policy focus areas:
Compensation and financial relief strategies: Directly improve the economic well-being of educators. Compensation is a major focus area supported by other researchers, advocates, and educators (see Brookings' Building a professional early childhood workforce requires a “compensation first” approach).
Financial resources: Public investment in the ECE workforce and broader ECE system. Break the cycle of child care which costs too much for parents but pays too little to workers.
Work environment standards: Children's learning environments are also the ECE work environment. Work towards adequate staffing and planning time.
Qualifications and educational supports: Facilitate pathways that provide consistent standards and support for educators to achieve higher education.
Workforce data: Through it all, gather and report data to help make visible the contributions of the ECE workforce.
*The Workforce Data Collaborative is a group of national organizations committed to learning, sharing, and advancing data about the child care workforce and includes the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, Child Care Aware of America, National Association for the Education of Young Children, National Association for Family Child Care, Home Grown, and the National Workforce Registry Alliance.
Cristi Carman is the Director of the RAPID survey, a program of national, state and local surveys designed to gather timely, actionable information from the important adults in young children’s lives.
Natalie Renew is the Executive Director of Home Grown, a national initiative committed to improving the quality of and access to home-based child care.
Meghan Salas Atwell is the Senior Director of Applied Research at NAEYC, an organization committed to promoting high-quality early learning for each and every child, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy and research.