FACT SHEET: American Rescue Plan Funds Provided a Critical Lifeline to 200,000 Child Care Providers – Helping Millions of Families to Work
Today, the White House announced that the American Rescue Plan – through its historic $24 billion Child Care Stabilization Program – has already provided vital aid to help more than 200,000 child care providers keep their doors open to as many as 9.5 million children, helping their parents work. Stabilization funds have already assisted providers employing more than 1 million child care workers.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also released a state-by-state analysis
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/occ/map/arp-act-stabilization-funding-state-fact-sheets of the American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) Child Care Stabilization program that details for the first time the number of child care providers that have already been helped in each state.
The Child Care Stabilization program has been critical to helping child care centers and family child care providers, which are mostly very small businesses, remain open or reopen and keep the child care workforce, disproportionately women of color, on the payroll. The stabilization program provided grants to child care programs that helped with basic operational costs like wages and benefits, rent and utilities, and program materials and supplies. Many states will continue to provide assistance to child care programs over the next year.
More than 90 percent of providers receiving stabilization funds reported that it helped them stay open, according to survey data from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/user-98/naeyc_ece_field_survey_february2022.pdf
One preliminary analysis from March of 2022 found that assistance from the American Rescue Plan and other Federal support had already helped prevent nearly 75,000 permanent child care program closures—preserving care for more than 3 million young children.
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/three-million-child-care-spots-saved-american-rescue-plan-funding/
An October 2021 analysis from the Census Bureau found that roughly 1 in 4 families with young children used advance Child Tax Credit payments to help cover the cost of child care.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/10/nearly-a-third-of-parents-spent-child-tax-credit-on-school-expenses.html
While the American Rescue Plan has helped provide this critical lifeline to child care providers during a period of crisis, many child care programs struggled to make ends meet long before the pandemic and the cost of care has been rising for years before the pandemic – leading families to struggle to find, and afford, quality care. President Biden will continue fighting to ensure families can access and afford quality child care.
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-Economics-of-Childcare-Supply-09-14-final.pdf
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/21/fact-sheet-american-rescue-plan-funds-provided-a-critical-lifeline-to-200000-child-care-providers-helping-millions-of-families-to-work/