Billions of Covid relief dollars are going to child care. Here’s why advocates say more needs to be done to fix the crisis - CNBC
By Michelle Fox
There already was a child-care crisis in America. Then Covid hit.
Child-care centers shut down. Working parents lost care and child-care workers found themselves without jobs. Parents, namely mothers, left jobs or reduced hours to fill the gap.
The Biden administration and Congress responded with $39 billion in funding to child-care providers, signed into law last week as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. That’s in addition to the $10 billion Congress provided in December’s relief package…Yet child-care advocates believe more needs to be done.
“The relief package was about getting us back to the pre-pandemic starting point, which had its flaws,” said Melissa Boteach, vice president for income security and child care/early learning at the National Women’s Law Center.
“In order to rebuild, we have to address the underlying inequities that made us so vulnerable to the pandemic in the first place.”