Q&A: Affordable Child Care

Q&A: Affordable Child Care

With U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley

Q: How are you working to address affordable child care for families?

A: During my annual 99 county meetings, I regularly hear from parents, employers and civic leaders about the need for affordable child care in their local communities. A couple years ago, Sen. Joni Ernst and I held a roundtable discussion in Des Moines to learn more about the barriers that small businesses and parents face to access affordable child care. The shortage of workers and rising cost of living present acute challenges for families across the state, creating situations that have come to be called "child care deserts," particularly in rural communities. A child care desert is defined as a census tract with more than 50 children under age 5 that has no child care providers or more than three times as many children as available licensed child care spots. Roughly 20 percent of Iowans live in a "child care desert."

As always, the feedback I get from Iowans informs my work at the policymaking table. As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, I welcomed a fellow Iowan in July to testify as an expert witness in her role as the Child Care Director at the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. Director Ryan Page shared that Iowa is home to 3.2 million people, including nearly 200,000 children under the age of 10. She told lawmakers Iowa often leads the nation in a noteworthy metric: three-fourths of children under age six have all available parents working outside the home. That underscores how important affordable child care is to Iowa families working to pay the bills or parents seeking higher education or vocational training that's integral to economic growth across the state. In her testimony, Director Page explained Iowa's approach to foster public-private partnerships to support access to child care. Through grants and contracts, Iowa supports cost-sharing arrangements with local businesses who partner with child care facilities to help lower costs for child care for their employees. She shared additional efforts include boosting wage enhancements for child care providers to help recruit and retain staffing and supports for child care facilities to help them achieve best practices to meet the needs of working families and local communities. Director Page summed up her testimony by reinforcing that Iowa prioritizes consumer education and transparency, so parents can make informed decisions about child care options that best fits their needs.

Q: What is the Child Care and Development Block Grant?

A: In 1990, Congress passed the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act that approved discretionary funds to help working families secure quality, affordable child care in their local communities. It's the main federal law administering child care programs and these dollars are integrated with mandatory spending from the Child Care Entitlement funding stream used by the states to subsidize child care for low-income, working families. I'm an original cosponsor of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Reauthorization Actof 2024. Our bill seeks to strengthen the federal law and improve its utility for states implementing these resources for working families, including measures to improve quality child care, such as safety, licensing, early learning and development; expand flexibility and parental choice to support families and providers in local communities; and, support professional development for child care providers to improve recruitment and retention. Expanding eligibility for CCDBG resources will help balance supply and demand issues confronting employers and working families. Specifically, our legislation would recalibrate reimbursement rates to better reflect costs of providing quality child care, as well as assist in-home and rural child care providers by providing technical assistance and directing the USDA to remove regulatory burdens that make it harder for home-based child care providers to participate. In rural areas, in-home child care providers make up 40 percent of care for children ages 4 and under. I'll continue listening and collaborating with Iowans to ensure limited federal resources are put to good use to expand access to affordable child care in communities across the state. Public-private partnerships can help provide peace of mind to parents that dependable, quality, affordable care is available for their children and address workforce challenges that employers across Iowa face to keep their doors open for business and foster economic vitality in local communities.

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