BRYCE COVERT, EARLY LEARNING NEWS

After decades of disinvestment in child care that went largely unnoticed, the pandemic knocked the fragile system even more off kilter. Day care providers had to close their doors; some shuttered completely. The tumult threw working parents’ lives into chaos and pushed many working mothers in particular out of paid work.

The experience led to a focus on child care that the sector hasn’t enjoyed since, perhaps, universal child care was debated in the 1960s. In the aftermath, President Joe Biden called for what would have been the largest and most transformational investment the country has seen in his Build Back Better proposal, which would have made child care free for poor families, capped middle-income families’ costs at 7 percent of their income, invested more money to create high-quality slots and improve providers’ wages and benefits, and implemented universal preschool. The House passed a version of his plan late last year.

To put that in perspective, the United States currently ranks at number 32 out of 40 OECD countries for the share of mothers of children 3 to 5 who are employed. The increase in employment that would be brought about by a Build Back Better-style plan would increase the country’s ranking to number nine.

That plan ran into seemingly immovable political barriers in the Senate, and it appears unlikely that Congress is going to pass anything quite that large or transformative anytime soon. Instead, Senators Patty Murray and Tim Kaine have put forward a slimmed down proposal to more significantly invest in the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant, which currently subsidizes child care for low-income families.

Amid all of this debate and attention, though, there are unanswered questions about what would actually happen if the country were to enact any of these proposals and change the way it spends on child care.

To answer those questions, eight economists, some of the best who are focused on early childhood education, created a model to assess all of the outcomes and tradeoffs. Their new paper studies two scenarios: a more narrow investment in which Congress fully funded the existing CCBDG so that all families who qualify for subsidies could actually get them, and a broad investment along the lines of what President Biden proposed in his Build Back Better plan. What they found is huge: under both scenarios, families’ costs would plunge, far more mothers would work full time, and parents would choose to put their kids into higher-quality care settings.

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GILREATH, THE HECHINGER REPORT

A new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) explores some of the positive influences of tax credits on child wellbeing as policymakers debate whether to expand them.

The study, published this month, found significant drops in reported child maltreatment cases in the weeks after families received federal child and earned income tax credits. During the pandemic, tax credits helped lift millions of families out of poverty.These findings are relevant as Congress debates whether to expand the child tax credits that were put in place in 2021 as a form of coronavirus pandemic relief. In the last six months of that year, the advance credit provided $250 to $300 each month directly to families.

The AAP study used broad child maltreatment data from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (the data encompasses physical, emotional and sexual abuse as well as neglect). An estimated 1 in 4 children experience child abuse or neglect at some point in their lives, and poverty has long been associated with an increased likelihood of child maltreatment.

Researchers at the University of Washington looked at the rate of suspected child maltreatment cases in 48 states and D.C. over three years, including two years before and one year after the 2017 effective date of the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act. The law expanded certain tax credits, but, in a trade-off, also gave the IRS more time to process returns, in order to eliminate fraud. That delay was one focus of the AAP study, which examined the number of suspected child maltreatment cases over several years in the weeks after individuals received child tax credits and earned income tax credits.

Before the PATH Act went into effect, researchers noted that the number of child maltreatment cases declined during the first six weeks of the tax season, when payments were issued. After the PATH Act, with payment of earned income tax credits delayed until late February — week seven of the tax season — researchers observed a similar dip in child maltreatment, but now corresponding to the delayed timeline.

Both before and after the enactment of the PATH Act, the rate of reported cases declined the most three weeks after families received the tax credits, with around 7 fewer child maltreatment cases per 100,000 children. The more families received in child and income tax credits, the fewer maltreatment cases were reported.

Photo by PiggyBank on Unsplash

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MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, THE WASHINGTON INFORMER

“I have a basic question that I ask related to policy making and leadership, and that basic question is, is it good for the children? Is it good for the children? If it’s not good for the children, we ought not be doing it.”

Barbara Sabol has been asking this question her entire life. From her early career as a registered nurse, through her service as Kansas’s first director of services for Children and Youth, Kansas’s secretary of health and environment, executive deputy commissioner in New York City’s Department of Social Services, commissioner of the Human Resources Administration in New York City, program director for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and other local, state, federal and private posts serving children, older adults and others, she has been a thoughtful, determined policymaker and advocate, always dedicated to protecting the most vulnerable. She was an inaugural member of the Children’s Defense Fund’s (CDF) Black Community Crusade for Children. Now, more than a decade after she “officially” retired, she is spearheading a project converting family land where her father was raised by his grandmother in Leavenworth County, Kansas, into a model community with affordable rental housing for young adults aging out of foster care. In her words, again: “So we owned some property, my sister and I, and we said, ‘How can we best use this property to make a difference for children?'”

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ANNA COOBAN, CNN BUSINESS

Workers are fed up.

“It’s life changing!” Lisa Gilbert, a lending services manager at Charity Bank, an ethical loans provider in the southwest of England, describes her new routine as "phenomenal." "I can really enjoy my weekend now because I've got my Friday for my chores and my other bits and pieces or... if I just want to take my mum out for a walk I can do that now without feeling guilty," she told CNN Business.

Gilbert cares for her son and two elderly parents. The extra day off a week means she no longer has to collect her groceries at 6 o'clock on a Saturday morning, and she can devote more time to her family. "I find that I'm saying 'yes we can' as opposed to 'no sorry we can't,'" she said. The six-month pilot commits 3,300 workers across 70 companies to work 80% of their usual week in exchange for promising to maintain 100% of their productivity.

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AMANDA GUARINO, THE FIRST FIVE YEARS FUND

The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program provides federal funds to states, territories, and tribal entities for voluntary, evidence-based home visiting services. This program was reauthorized in 2018 through FY2022 and will expire September 30, 2022. Given the urgent need for reauthorization, FFYF has created fact sheets for all 50 states and D.C demonstrating the positive impact of MIECHV.

Voluntary home visiting programs, like those made possible by MIECHV, pair families who often have limited support and resources with trained home visitors such as nurses, social workers, and educators. Home visitors meet with parents one on one from pregnancy through their child’s kindergarten entry to help lay the foundation for the health, education, development, and economic self-sufficiency of the entire family.

MIECHV is the recognized gold standard in voluntary, evidence-based policymaking. However, federal funding for MIECHV has not increased since FY2013, which has diminished the ability of states to support families who are in need. Prior to FY2013, MIECHV funding was increased from $100 million to $250 million in FY2011, $350 million in FY2012, and $400 million annually in FY2013 and subsequent years. The National Home Visiting Resource Center (NHVRC) estimates that 22,976,500 children and 17,637,800 families could benefit from home visiting.

After nearly a decade of level funding, the National Home Visiting Coalition, of which FFYF is a member, recommends a 5-year reauthorization that would increase funding by $200 million annually (reaching $1.4 billion in FY2027); doubling the MIECHV tribal set-aside from 3% to 6% to reach more families in American Indian and Alaska Native communities; and continuing to allow virtual home visiting implemented with model fidelity as a service delivery option for families who choose it.

Learn more about the positive impact of MIECHV in your state using the list below:

• Oklahoma

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