Support for child care is popular as Ohio advocates still fighting for funding

Polling continues to show government support for child care is a popular issue among all political sides. But advocates in Ohio are still preparing their arguments to boost state support as the budget process rolls on.

The Ohio Senate is working toward a draft budget after the House approved its version earlier this month.

As the process continues toward its July 1 deadline, child care advocates hope to get some things into the Senate budget that didn’t appear in the House version. They say they’re important not only for families in need of child care, but also for the state economy and the workforce that supports it.

The House proposal included $200 million for the Child Care Choice Voucher Program over the next two years. The funding comes from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant.

Also included in the House proposal is the establishment of the Child Care Cred Program. It’s a provision originally introduced as Republican-led legislation to split the costs of child care three ways — between the state, the business and the employee — when an eligible individual is employed by a business willing to apply for the program.

Parents and workers involved with child care space met with advocacy group Groundwork Ohio on Tuesday to discuss the current level of child care support. They also discussed how additional state spending would increase child care affordability and access, and boost the wages of child care workers.

Cheryl Rose said when she was a young parent working in food service, child care assistance based on her income helped her remain in the workforce and grow professionally.

Now a partner at Constellation Wealth Advisors, Rose said workforce growth is the one thing that will drive prosperity, and workforce growth is possible through support for child care. That support creates longterm ripple effects that may not appear instantly, but will impact the state’s financial future for years to come, she said.

“What happens is, 18 years from now, there are companies (growing because of an increase in workers), there are more opportunities,” Rose said. “It creates multitudes.”

Improving the lives of child care workers has its own ripple effects, said Christian Davis, founder of the Cincinnati Parent Empowerment Network. With historically low pay, child care workers are often on public assistance and can’t afford food, let alone care for their own children. Bringing wages up and giving workers the ability to thrive boosts the care they can give, she said.

“The quality of your center is really a determinant of the quality of the staff to fill those needs,” Davis said.

Groundwork Ohio wants to see the Child Care Voucher Program receive more funding to address affordability, and the group, among others, will to push for an increase to the eligibility level for the state’s Publicly Funded Child Care.

Gov. Mike DeWine’s executive proposal raised eligibility for care to 160% of the federal poverty line. For a family of four in Ohio, that’s $51,440. But the House left eligibility at 145% in its version of the budget, a level that the head of the Ohio Department of Children and Youth say is the lowest level of support in the country.

The budget also comes at a time when 4 in 10 Ohioans don’t have access because of a lack of child care facilities in their area, according to new analysis by Groundwork Ohio.

The survey also found that, on average, a mom working full-time spends 27% of her median earnings on child care for an infant. It’s worse for moms who are primary earners. Just 32% of Ohio households are headed by women, but they make up 59% of those in poverty, the study found.

The average cost for an infant to be in child care in Ohio is more than $12,000 per year, according to Child Care Aware of America.

Government support of child care enjoys significant public approval. New polling released by the First Five Years Fund, found “strong support” among Republican voters for child care-related tax credits at the federal level.

The recent polling found that 75% of Republicans think the inability to access or afford child care as a “crisis” or a “major problem” for American working families. A majority said expanding child care tax credits would “strengthen the overall economy.”

Of those Republican voters, 83% support increasing the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. It might be on the chopping block as congressional Republicans decide what to include in a funding blueprint approved earlier this month.

The Trump administration is also considering a proposal to eliminate funding for Head Start, a child care program for low-income households.

Head Start is among the programs child care advocates have said should be supported further to improve education outcomes and child care opportunities, rather than be cut.