Category: Early Childhood

Much needed help is on the way to child care providers

Big thanks to the Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES) and the Governor’s Office for recently launching the Arizona Child Care Stabilization Grant Program. The program was made possible with funds from the American Rescue Plan, the most recent Biden Administration COVID relief package passed by Congress in March 2021.

To help sustain Arizona's child care system which continues to be severely impacted by the COVID pandemic, this DES grant program will provide a consistent funding source to help early child care and education providers to cover the increased costs and other challenges brought on by the pandemic. Funds can be used for a variety of expenses like rent, supplies, and utilities. Also, the funds can cover teacher salaries, benefits, enhanced wages, and/or bonuses + incentives to help address the workforce shortage that continues to plague the industry.

Licensed child care providers, DES non-certified relatives, DES certified family child care, DHS certified group home, and tribal and military regulated providers. Once approved, providers will receive automatic, monthly flat payments of up to $10,000 per month through July 2023. Apply by August 15 to receive the first payment at the end of August 2021.

More information about the grant program

Grant applications

Babies and Toddlers Need Help Too!

The pandemic has raised awareness of several issues and gaps in the early childhood system that have long existed. Much focus has been placed on the needs of preschool and school aged children and the gaps in access to high quality child care, but we do not want to forget our babies and toddlers who have entered the world during this tumultuous time. To help accomplish that, earlier this month a bipartisan group of Senators reintroduced the Resilience Investment, Support, and Expansion (“RISE”) from Trauma Act. This legislation is aimed at supporting children who have been exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and trauma.

We have long known that healthy, nurturing relationships with parents and caregivers are the key to a baby’s social and emotional development, also known as infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH). Policies and programs that address promotion, prevention, and treatment can provide parents and young children with support to promote social and emotional development and prevent and treat mental health issues as early as possible. Intervening early is the key to giving all our children the best chance at success in life.

The RISE from the Trauma Act would award grants to eligible entities to establish a national network of IECMH training institutes. Additional grant funds can be used to create scholarships and other supports for trainees, with emphasis on recruiting, retention, and career placement of trainees of color, who are underrepresented in the IECMH clinical workforce. The historic legislation places an emphasis on collaboration that will reflect diverse partnerships, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Tribal Colleges, and State Associations of Infant Mental Health.

Additionally, the legislation would:

  • Increase funding for the Health Resources and Services Administration’s National Health Service Corps to expand the reach of available mental health clinicians in schools and community-based settings;
  • Enhance trauma-informed and resilience-focused practice among general education, special education teachers, and early childhood educators;
  • Enhance coordination between the Department of Health and Human Services and appropriate stakeholders with trauma-informed subject matter expertise to develop accessible and easily understandable tools for use by frontline service providers; and
  • Establish a National Law Enforcement Child and Youth Trauma Coordinating Center to aid state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in interacting with infants, children, and families who have experienced trauma

It is fast and easy to contact your members of Congress today and let them know that you support giving young children the best chance at a healthy and successful start in life.

Contact your members of congress

Thank you to Governor Ducey

For months, the early childhood community has experienced a workforce shortage crisis, and as more Arizonans return to work, it has been a challenge for child care providers to hire enough staff. For health and safety reasons, child care providers must maintain strict child-to-staff ratios, and with no new staff onboard, many have had to turn away parents seeking care for their children.

But help is now on the way!

On Friday, to coincide with Child Care Provider Appreciation Day, Governor Ducey and DES announced the release of $9M in remaining CARES Act funds for the Child Care Workforce Retention and Recruitment Grant program. These grant funds can be used for salaries and benefits for employees or bonus incentives for hiring and retention. Child care group homes and family child care homes without staff may utilize funds for a variety of expenses including licensing fees, liability insurance, tuition and registration relief for families, lease and mortgage payments, utilities, classroom materials, and supplies. Also, providers will receive additional supports and training on improving business practices that will help save time, money, and improve the quality of the services they deliver.

Special thanks to Governor Ducey for making these funds available. While the program will not completely solve the crisis we currently face, it is an important first step to assuring a competent, highly skilled workforce to care for our children.

More information about the grant program.

Federal Funding could help looming workforce shortage crisis in child care

In mid-March, Congress passed the American Recovery Act (ARA). The legislation was the latest in a string of COVID relief bills intended to assist families, businesses, and communities through the pandemic. The Act set aside $39 billion to help the child care system which has struggled to remain afloat for the past year. The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) recently released its estimates for how much child care funding will come to each state to help the damaged child care system. Arizona’s share is expected to be just under $1 billion. The full estimates are included HERE.

This funding comes just in time to address a growing crisis in the child care workforce as 1 in 6 jobs in the child care sector have been lost during the pandemic. Despite increased signs of returning to a new normal, the staff who previously filled those jobs are not coming back. Child care providers must meet expanded health and safety requirements including strict student/teacher ratios. Even if they have the physical space to serve more children in their programs, they often do not have the staff to provide the care. Desperate parents returning to their previous work settings do not have the same options for child care that they had before. There was an existing shortage of child care workers prior to the pandemic. Child care workers are largely underpaid and undervalued. In 2018, typical annual wages for a woman working full time, year-round in the child care industry were $29,900 per year as 1 in 10 child care workers had incomes below the federal poverty line and twice the poverty rate for workers overall. As programs begin to reopen, many former workers are choosing to return to jobs with higher wages, fewer requirements, and with less risk for contracting COVID.

Ronnie Armstrong, executive director for Children's Campus and Premier Children's Center has provided child care in the Valley for nearly 35 years says, “The pandemic has accentuated the problems in an already broken child care system. Families are returning to work and our enrollments are growing every day. We do not have the quality, committed staff to meet the needs of families. The child care industry is in a hiring crisis which seems absurd considering the rate of unemployment in our country. We desperately need quality, committed staff to meet the needs of the children and families in our community.”

The Arizona Early Childhood Alliance (AZECA) is working collaboratively with DES to bring together stakeholders to make recommendations on how the state should spend the new federal ARA funds. Those recommendations will undoubtedly include ways to incentivize workers to return and remain in the child care workforce. We encourage the Governor and the Department to take these recommendations to heart and release the funds as soon as possible to avert this looming crisis.

Essential workers making poverty wages

While the state of Arizona is making strides toward increasing teacher pay, one group has been noticeably left behind, early childhood educators. A new report out by the Berkeley Center for the Study of Child Care Employment highlights that early childhood educators in Arizona are still lagging far behind. The field is largely made up of women and often women of color, and despite the fact that we ask them to provide care to our most vulnerable citizens, they often make poverty wages. During the COVID pandemic, it has become clear that child care is an essential service, yet the policy response at the state and federal level has largely ignored the educators themselves. Unfortunately, this was an existing problem that has only been made worse in the last 12 months. According to the report “The burden of school closures and parents continuing to work falls on child care providers. We need to be properly recognized through appropriate funding, PPE, and support systems. The government is largely ignoring the particularly unique burden that is put on child care during this pandemic.”

The Arizona data shows that the median wage for child care workers is $11.97 and even those with a bachelor’s degree make 21% less than their counterparts in the K-8 education system. And worse, the POVERTY rate for early educators is over 20%, double that for other Arizona workers. The gap in pay is an issue of parity in the education field, but it is also an equity and access issue. We cannot continue to expect the ECE workforce to bear the burden of care during this education crisis in America without compensating them adequately for the important work that they do.

Read the full report here.

Read the Arizona profile data here.

Good ideas that didn't fit the bill

The Arizona legislature set a deadline that any bills that did not receive an initial committee hearing by the end of last week cannot advance this session. Committee chairs wield a lot of power in deciding which bills receive consideration or not and with 1,823 bills introduced this session, we understand there simply is not enough time to hear every bill. But there were several good ideas that would improve the lives of Arizona’s children and families introduced this year that never had the opportunity to be considered in committee. Even though time has run out this year for those bills, we want to take a moment to highlight a few of those good ideas that merit stronger consideration in the future:

  • HB 2416: Sponsored by Representative Pawlik to appropriate $13 million for child care to raise reimbursement rates. Arizona’s child care assistance program continues to reimburse providers for care at rates that are far below what it costs to actually provide that care. Parents often have to pay the difference between the reimbursement rate and the cost, making accessing child care too expensive even for many low-income families who are eligible for the program.
  • HB 2291: Sponsored by Representative Osborne to provide comprehensive dental care to eligible pregnant women. Pregnant women are especially vulnerable to developing oral health problems, which if left untreated are associated with adverse birth outcomes and increased risk of dental disease in early childhood.
  • HB 2273: Sponsored by Representative Butler to increase income eligibility for KidsCare, Arizona’s health insurance program for low-income children, from 200 percent of the federal poverty level to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Arizona currently has one of the lowest income eligibility thresholds for its children’s health insurance program in the nation. After years of progress toward reducing the rate of uninsured children, Arizona has taken an unfortunate turn. Between 2016 and 2019, the number of uninsured children grew by roughly 22%. In 2019, 161,000 Arizona children were uninsured – the fourth highest rate of uninsured children in the United States.
  • HB 2659: Sponsored by Senator Marsh to establish an annual conference on children and youth to identify and recommend policy solutions to the legislature that will improve the lives of children in Arizona.
  • HB 2146, HB 2147, HB 2148, HB 2283, HB 2566, SB 1098, SB 1736, SB 1737: Sponsored by Representatives Friese, Lieberman, and Bolding; and Senators Alston and Bowie. Several bills were introduced this session to provide much-needed reform to the private school tuition tax credit program which diverts public tax dollars to private schools. These bills would restrict use of these tax credits to low-income families and would limit the amount which can be used for administrative costs. The expansion of private school tuition tax credits has had a significant impact on reducing state revenues growing from a cost of $14 million in 1999 to $177 million in 2019.
  • HB 2728: Sponsored by Representative Sierra to make participation in extended foster care until the age of 21 an opt-out rather than opt-in program for youth aging out of foster care when they turn 18. Extended foster care can provide a better bridge to adulthood especially during the current health and economic crisis.
  • SCR 1017: Sponsored by Senator Quezada. A legislative proclamation identifying racism as a public health crisis affecting our entire society and avowing to support policies that reduce racial and ethnic health inequities and promote social justice.

The list above is not an exhaustive list. We are glad to see so many lawmakers introducing bills this session that will benefit Arizona’s children, and we hope many of those bills become law in the future.

Image source: ABC's Schoolhouse Rock

State of the State

This week, the Arizona legislature begins its work for the year at a time when many Arizona children and families are struggling to meet their basic needs during this health and economic crisis. Recently released data by the U.S. Census Bureau shows 1 in 6 Arizona households with children (16%) said they had only slight confidence or no confidence at all that they would be able to make their next rent or mortgage payment on time. Increasing numbers of Arizona households with children are also reporting they do not have health insurance and/or do not have enough food to eat, and communities of color are disproportionately suffering.

That is why it will be so critical for lawmakers to focus their work on helping families achieve financial stability, and keeping children healthy and safe during these difficult times.

Our 2021 legislative priorities include:

  • Making health care more accessible for Arizona’s children by expanding eligibility for KidsCare, Arizona’s Children’s Health Insurance Program;
  • Restoring supports to grandparents and other kinship caregivers who step in and prevent children from entering foster care when parents are unable to care for their children;
  • Provide safe, quality child care options for working parents of young children by increasing the child care subsidy reimbursement rates;
  • Providing Arizona’s public schools with the same amount of funding for conducting virtual schools during the pandemic as they receive for in-person instruction.

What Arizona does not need is more tax cuts which will only reduce state revenues that struggling Arizona families are counting on to provide housing and food supports, and make child care more affordable. Rather than shortsighted tax cuts, we urge Governor Ducey and lawmakers to take a more responsible approach and prioritize a plan to stop the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19, and put Arizona on a path to recovery from this health and economic crisis.

Read our 2021 Legislative Priorities

National survey shows overwhelming support for investment in high-quality early childhood education

Recent national surveys have shown, in contrast to many other issues for which voters are divided, support remains overwhelming for state investment in high-quality early childhood education. Seventy-six percent of likely Arizona voters said they support the state investing in high-quality, early childhood education opportunities for children from birth to five years old, according to a newly released survey completed by Moore Information Group.

The second annual survey was commissioned by the Arizona Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, a key partner of the Arizona Early Childhood Alliance (AZECA). This survey confirms Arizona voters, regardless of political party, understand the connection between high-quality, affordable early childhood education and future educational performance.

This data comes at a key crossroad. The COVID pandemic has put the state’s early childhood programs in a very difficult position with many struggling to stay afloat.  As we move into the next state legislative session, it will be more important than ever for our policymakers to prioritize state funding to keep the system intact, and to assure that early childhood programs will be available as the state recovers from the pandemic.

The full survey can be found HERE.

KIDS COUNT Data Book is the only source to focus on statewide trends about Arizona’s children

Children’s Action Alliance (CAA) is proud to present the 2020 Arizona KIDS COUNT Data Book—the only biennial source to focus on statewide trends about Arizona’s children. Thanks to the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, this powerful resource helps inform decision-makers and stakeholders about the economic, social, and physical well-being of children and their families throughout the state. In addition to the Data Book, statewide and county indicators can be found on our new and updated website – along with other resources, toolkits, and information on how to advocate for children and families.

As you know, CAA regularly uses data as a compelling tool to find common ground across geography and political ideology to create an Arizona where every child is safe, loved, and has access to quality education and affordable health care. In this KIDS COUNT Data Book, the data show Arizona has made important strides in improving the conditions for children since the Great Recession - before the unprecedented challenges our communities, our state and our nation have faced due to the COVID-19 health crisis.

The 2020 Arizona KIDS COUNT Data Book offers a closer look at the strengths and contributions of immigrant families as more than 1 in 4 children are growing up in an immigrant household and 6 in 10 Arizona children are children of color.  Despite the changing demographics in the state, children of color are more likely than their White peers to lack the fundamental supports to grow up healthy and strong. It is our hope that YOU - lawmakers, advocates, and state agency leaders use the information in this Data Book to address the long-standing structural inequities in our state. It is time to move towards an Arizona that provides opportunity for all children, not a privileged few.

As advocates for children, we will continue to challenge ourselves to think creatively and critically to find new ways to support Arizona’s children and families. Join us and use the Data Book and other resources on our new website to spark action for measurable and positive change.