Five lessons from Illinois’ investment in the child care workforce

Five lessons from Illinois’ investment in the child care workforce

As the US continues to face a child care crisis, with increasing childcare workstrength slowdown and Child care programs report worsening staffing shortages after federal pandemic relief funding expired last year, states across the country tried to increase teacher recruitment and retention and make child care more affordable for families. Illinois has recently made significant progress in this area thanks to its Smart start Grant program. Through this government grant program, child care programs that agree to pay higher minimum wages to staff receive stable, ongoing funds to cover their costs so they can invest in raising classroom staff wages. without increased tuition or supplements for families.

Their efforts provide lessons for child care advocates (like me) who are interested in increasing the supply of affordable, high-quality child care. Here are five things I learned from the Illinois history program:

1. Access to and affordability of child care is inseparable from workforce support.

Because childcare is what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calls ‘broken market’“Families spend too much of their income on early care and education, while educators who provide primary care they pay too little. Expanding eligibility for child care assistance programs could allow more families to receive help paying for care, and lowering copayments could ease the burden on families who receive assistance. However, families should still be able to find care for children that meets their needs. Investing in the child care workforce is an important part of solving the child care crisis.

2. Every policy has trade-offs.

Smart Start Workforce Grants require programs receiving grants to pay teacher and teacher aides wages of at least $17 to $19.25 per hour, depending on geographic location, resulting in an average wage increase of approximately $2 –$4 per hour. Grants are available on a per-class basis to licensed child care centers or family homes that meet qualification requirements. With a target of $200 million for the program, policy deliberately compromised between how many programs would be served and how large the salary increase would be, and ultimately tried to find a balance where all relevant programs received sufficient funding for significant salary increases.

3. Community input is invaluable.

To help determine where to find these trade-offs and how to establish guidelines, it was necessary to involve service providers and educators. For more than a year now, advisory group of service providers and advocates met monthly share your views and provide input on policy options, while more 1,800 service providers were surveyed and 110 took part in focus groups.. advisory group discussed what trade-offs The biggest concerns were how much the pay increase would increase employee retention and what solutions would best align with the governor’s overall goals. Smart Start Initiativea multi-year plan to strengthen the state’s early care and education systems. Stakeholders and policymakers in other states may make different decisions about what tradeoffs should be made, since no policy is one size fits all.

4. A lawyer’s work is never done.

These grants come from state general funds and will be subject to legislative funding each year. That means they depend on lawmakers continuing to prioritize compensation for early childhood educators. As D.C. attorneys demonstrated this year their campaign to restore the DC Pay Equity FundLawmakers need to hear from the community that early childhood educators deserve better pay for their important work. Additionally, salary increases are a significant step forward, but aspiring educators also need much greater access to health insurance, retirement benefits, and other compensation elements that lead to a thriving workforce.

5. The federal government needs to step up its efforts.

Illinois has taken important steps to increase child care pay, but relying on state investment alone is not enough to make up for decades of underinvestment in federal child care. Congress must make strong and sustainable investments to ensure equitable support for early educators and families across the country, and create a system where families have access to the help they need.

I am encouraged that advocates, administrators and legislators are working together to increase rewards for early educators, and I hope Illinois will serve as a model for the rest of the country.