Did you hear the great news?
By a vote of 96 to 2, the Senate reauthorized the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) for the first time in nearly 20 years! This is an important moment for children and families and a key step in building a strong early learning system.
Here’s what the new bill will do:
- Improve the health and safety of children in child care settings
- Make it easier for families to get and keep the child care assistance they need
- Enable children to have more stable care
- Strengthen the quality of child care
We particularly like the provisions that are intended to improve continuity of care, such as this “Improves families’ access to child care and to child care assistance and increases stability for children in child care by:
- Establishing a minimum initial eligibility period of 12 months for child care assistance.
- Requiring states to make efforts to ensure that the redetermination process for child care assistance eligibility does not unduly disrupt parents’ work, education, or job training efforts.”
As you know, high-quality child care is critical for the success of children and their parents. Child care provides countless early learning opportunities to children and enables parents to work so they can support their families. Stay tuned for more updates as the bill moves to the House of Representatives.
This information comes from the National Women’s Law Center. Here is a link to more details.
