Biden has a childcare plan to help children and parents: Day 41 of 100 Days of loving Joe Biden

by GoodNewsRoundup

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(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020 Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020 at 4:03:04am PDT

Parents all over the country are struggling right now with figuring out how to handle child care during a pandemic when schools may or may not be open. It is difficult and sometimes impossible because, in America, Child care is broken.

Biden has a plan to fix it.

What do we mean by childcare being broken?

Child care in America “is a system that has not worked very well for anybody,” even before Covid-19, Austin said. “It hasn’t worked particularly well for children, for families, or for the people who are providing services and working in these programs.”

For many families, child care is unaffordable, costing more than $1,000 a month in many states. It’s also extremely expensive to provide: Quality care requires low caregiver-to-child ratios and strict safety protocols, even in normal times — not to mention overhead costs like rent and food for children. Even with fees that are punishingly high for many parents, many programs struggle, Austin said.

They have little cash on hand for emergencies, and they often pay staff poverty-level wages and offer no benefits. Child care workers nationwide make an average hourly wage of just $10.82, and some earn far less. More than half rely on some form of public assistance to get by, and they’re more likely than other workers to lack health insurance and paid sick leave.

Low pay for workers also affects the quality of care that kids receive. Children do best with a consistent caregiver, but low pay leads to high turnover, Rhian Allvin, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), told Vox. Kids also benefit from having caregivers who are trained in child development and early education, but “if you make $10.40 an hour without a BA and then you make $11.40 with a BA, there’s no incentive to be grounded in the science of early learning,” Allvin said.

What is in Biden’s plan to fix this?

As a first step, Biden will immediately provide states, tribal, and local governments with the fiscal relief they need to keep workers employed and keep vital public services running, including direct care and child care services

But the former vice president also promises to go beyond the immediate crisis and invest in child care for the future. His plan would provide free preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds in the country. And for kids under the age of 3, the plan would create a system of tax credits and subsidies so that families earning less than 1.5 times the median income in their state would pay no more than 7 percent of their income for child care, with “the most-hard pressed working families” paying nothing.

The plan also includes tax credits to encourage employers to construct onsite child care facilities, something companies did during World War II that’s become harder to imagine today, as families (most often mothers) are expected to handle child care on their own.

The proposal would also boost worker pay to the level of elementary school teachers, as well as provide workers with health insurance, paid sick leave, and affordable care for their own children. It also outlines steps to protect workers’ rights to unionize for better pay and working conditions, something they’ve won in some states (including California) but not all.

The proposal “is about easing the squeeze on working families who are raising their kids and caring for aging loved ones at the same time,” Biden said . “And it’s about creating jobs with better pay and career pathways for caregivers, and showing them the dignity and respect that they deserve.”

Biden is a man who spent four hours in transit every single day so he could tuck his kids in at night, be there if they woke up scared, and eat breakfast with them in the morning. Fatherhood has been a cornerstone of his life and he will do all he can to make sure that Americans have the best tools possible for taking care of their kids.