Experts say COVID-era investment in child care is a start, not a solution - Keene Sentinel
By Meg McIntyre
Some states — including New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts — have shifted the way they subsidize child care during the pandemic in an effort to keep providers from closing permanently.
In the past, child care assistance has typically been paid to providers based on attendance, meaning centers would lose that revenue during closures, or if families benefiting from assistance chose to keep their kids home during the pandemic.
Both Massachusetts and Vermont began paying subsidies to providers based on enrollment rather than attendance during the COVID crisis. And New Hampshire provided “disaster billing” payments to child care providers on behalf of students enrolled in the state’s Child Care and Development Fund scholarship program, regardless of whether the provider was closed or open and operating as an emergency center, according to Ilg.
The Bay State used a similar approach for its operational grants, allocating them on a per-classroom or per-program basis rather than by enrollment or attendance, according to Commissioner of Early Education and Care Samantha Aigner-Treworgy.
“I think that the way we used our CARES Act funding, as a per-classroom and per-program entity as opposed to per-child, really does offer a model that we were already trying to think about of how you create financing structures for the field that are more stable and sustainable,” Aigner-Treworgy said.