Since July 1997 and the commencement of welfare reform, there has been a quiet, unprecedented panic quickly sweeping across the country. Child-care providers serving mid- to lower-income families have been worrying about how the change would impact the new working poor, forced to take low-paying jobs that could never cover the cost of quality child care.
But on Jan. 7, when President Clinton announced a $21.7 billion proposed expansion in federal child-care programs over five years, the panic eased into a dull throb of fear. Those of us in the child-care business feel somewhat reassured that at least someone out there understands that parents should not be forced to choose between feeding their children or placing them in a safe facility while they work.
The president’s plan could help at least 25,000 more working families in Illinois pay for child care and provide them with a greater selection of quality facilities from which to choose. Perhaps additional funding will reduce the number of parents currently on the waiting lists of our Head Start and after-school day-care programs.
Children who are enrolled in a child-care program spend more waking hours (on average) with their child-care worker than they do with their parents. So it’s reassuring that the president has earmarked $3 billion for an early learning fund that could be used to train child-care workers and ultimately could lead to an increase in pay structure.
Child-care workers should not be paid the same as the person who processes your fast-food order. One hopes that Clinton’s plan will provide the funding needed to develop child-care careers and not just child-care jobs.
If this is indeed “the single largest national commitment to child care in the history of the United States,” as Clinton says it is, it’s about time.
