Ensuring Access to Affordable Child Care
Blueprint of Public Policy Priorities for the 119th Congress, 2025-2026
Priority:
- Ensure every family with young children has access to affordable, comprehensive, age-appropriate child care
Legislative Initiatives:
- Protect investments in Early Head Start and Head Start Programs, expand the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), and increase compensation and benefits for care providers
Goal:
- Support investments and improvements to child care to ensure that families of young children have access to comprehensive, affordable care and provide much-needed support for millions of families across the country
Background:
There is a child care crisis in America. Currently, the United States has no unified child care or early learning system that ensures every family can find the care that suits their needs best. Families can either piece together care for expensive and limited options or leave the workforce behind and care for their children themselves. Low-income families are at a particularly steep disadvantage in balancing work and affording child care.
Child care providers are also facing financial challenges due to being unable to provide adequate compensation for employees and keeping their small businesses afloat. Child care providers are typically women, non-white, and required to have additional education to have an opportunity to earn a livable wage. Child care is one of the lowest compensated fields, yet individuals are often required to work long hours shopping for and preparing food, keeping records, cleaning facilities, and providing comprehensive and age-appropriate care to children who have various needs.
Recommendations:
Based on these needs, NASW urges policymakers to tackle the child care crisis by:
- Protecting investments in Early Head Start and Head Start programs, which provide valuable support to low-income families, families of children with physical and developmental delays, those in foster care, and youth experiencing homelessness, supporting the Child Care and Development Block Grants (CCDBG), which provide money to states to offer subsidies for low-income families to help them afford child care, and by investing in child care workers.
Investing in child care can help ensure that families are able to afford child care services that will help children develop healthily, ensure their family’s economic security, increases workers’ productivity, and contributes to growth of the overall economy.