The First Five Things To Know About: Child Care Is Infrastructure

America runs on child care. Reliable, affordable child care is fundamental to the fabric of our nation. Working families need it so parents have peace of mind that their children are safe and well cared for while they are at work or school. Employers need it to build a stable, dependable workforce. And young children benefit from the early learning opportunities that build cognitive and social skills during their first five years. But we simply don’t have enough care options.

The Child Care Is Infrastructure package makes important investments to help increase the supply of quality child care. This package, championed by Whip Katherine Clark, is made up of two bills which, together, help shore up the facilities, workforce and businesses that provide the backbone of a robust child care system. (The previous version was first introduced by Whip Clark in 2020.)

The first bill, the Child Care Infrastructure Act, invests in child care facilities. It establishes a grant program for states to assist with constructing new or renovating existing child care facilities to build child care capacity and ensure safe early learning facilities for children (prioritizing grants to facilities that serve a significant percentage of infants and toddlers.) The bill also directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct immediate and long-term needs assessments, so we can get a full picture of the child care sector’s real infrastructure needs.

The second bill, the Child Care Workforce Development Act, invests in the child care workforce. It creates a student loan repayment program for early childhood educators and establishes a program to provide scholarship grants to people pursuing their childhood development associate (CDA) credential. This will help to build a pipeline of early educators by encouraging more workers to pursue early educator credentialing and careers.

This package provides another opportunity to prioritize and strengthen child care access and affordability in this country. To better support hard working families and our littlest learners, Congress must seize every opportunity to strengthen child care and early learning, including investing in federal programs, providing robust funding through the appropriation process, modernizing child care provisions in the tax code, bolstering child care infrastructure, and supporting the child care workforce.