A month before Jennifer Frank was due to give birth, the East Peoria construction worker started seeking child care. She and her husband Ben looked for something their household budget could absorb, but they ended up on a waiting list for months, and then paying almost $2,000 more a year than the national average of $10,600. (Peoria’s average is about $10,300.)

“Every year the price would increase,” Jennifer says. “When you have an infant, you pay the most, [and] we had to provide our own diapers, wipes, and formula.”

Across the river, teacher KJ Mathews for the first few years of motherhood juggled her teaching job’s schedule with available child-care services, and the choices were slim, from a small child-care center to her parents.

Regardless of location or income, choices are few, with parents resorting to friends or family to care for kids.

“My reliance on my parents had to stop fairly quickly because Elli would end up getting my dad sick, and he has health issues of his own that we had to be concerned about,” KJ says. “My husband Trenten and I had to rotate many times on who would stay home.”

Scrambling

After changing jobs and working second shift, a home day care she’d used had hours that no longer worked.

“A friend had decided to start her own babysitting service,” KJ says, “so we made the switch. It was a hard switch [but] we stayed with our friend for close to a year until I got my current position with the City.

“My new hours and salary allowed more options. We found a day-care center close to home and my husband’s work,” she continues. “She has been there for only eight months, and it has been a great experience with more kids and structure.”

KJ and Jennifer are two of more than 15,000 families in metro Peoria coping with the two main obstacles for parents with jobs outside the home: affordability and availability of child care.

Adding to those challenges is a huge change taking effect Sept. 30 — the end of federal pandemic aid for child-care centers and parents. That could cause increased costs, layoffs or shutdowns.

“Too many parents cannot secure child care that is compatible with work schedules and commutes,” reported the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AEC), which said that in 2020–21 13% of children birth to age 5 lived in families in which someone quit, changed or declined a job because of child-care problems.

The country’s lack of affordable and accessible child care short-changes children, costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars, blocks women professionally and hurts families, the foundation added.

Bad to worse?

“Our current approach fails kids, parents and child-care workers by every measure,” said AEC president Lisa Hamilton. “Without safe child care they can afford and get to, working parents face impossible choices, affecting not only their families but their employers.”

In recent years, despite some $50 billion in help from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, about half of the country’s child-care facilities closed, worsening child care’s limits. The drop in child-care employment from pre-pandemic levels is affecting more than 460,000 families nationwide, according to analysis by Wells Fargo economists.

In Illinois, 129,599 child-care spots were saved by the ARPA, said the First Five Years Foundation (FFY), which advocates for more government support, and 92% of providers credited stabilization grants for helping them stay open.

“Pandemic relief provided by Congress prevented the industry’s collapse, but didn’t address systematic shortcomings that have plagued families, child-care providers, and our economy for years,” FFY said. “The existing structure of America’s child care market is unsustainable.”

Taking action

In Illinois, another advocacy group, Birth To Five Illinois — set up by the state Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) engaged in an 11-month study of Illinois’ child-care infrastructure, demand and resources, all to determine possible improvements to programs and services to both parents and caregivers. Its findings, released last month, are being shared with state officials and agencies as well as families and caregivers.

Peoria-area native Kari Clark was the regional council manager for the report’s section on Peoria County (Region 48, one of 56 Regions examined), and her report showed that in Peoria, many caregivers remain unaware of existing programs that could help, and thousands of kids younger than 6 are in households living at twice the federal poverty level and without publicly funded ECEC openings.

As Jennifer realized, paying for care for younger kids is so expensive it’s comparable to in-state tuition at most public universities and housing costs. And as FFY has shown, states’ spending varies widely. For instance, Nevada spends $8,910 per child on preschool education while Florida spends $2,254/child.

The State of Illinois spends $5,398/child — ranked 24th in the nation, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

“Parents in Illinois spend an average of $9,876 for center-based infant care and $7,248 for home-based infant care each year, putting quality child-care options out of reach for many families,” FFY added.

State Rep. Mary Beth Canty (D-Arlington Heights), who introduced recent reforms in the legislature (See “Baby steps” sidebar), said, “The cost of child care is really prohibitive when you only have a half-day [pre-school] program and the hours can be really wonky for working families.”

Also, government programs such as Head Start, Child Care and Development Block Grants (CCDBG) or Illinois’ existing pre-K program only serve a fraction of the state’s children, just 209,919 kids out of a population of 855,688 under the age of six, “leaving families to pay high prices out of pocket or with no care options at all,” FFY said.

Overall:

• The cost for child care has more than doubled since 1990, according to AEC.
• The federal Child Care & Development Block Grants provide some subsidies to eligible households (earning 53% of the state median income), but just 30,300 kids ages 0-6 are served by CCDBG or other aid, according to FFY — 3% of children that age.
• Two-thirds of child-care centers have staff shortages, FFY reported, probably due to difficulties in hiring or turnover, and the U.S. workforce taking care of our kids has about 57,000 fewer workers than before COVID.
• 40% of child-care employees are woefully underpaid — their wages are lower than 98% of all occupations, AEC said, and the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment reported Illinois child-care workers’ median, or mid-point, wage in 2019 was $11.16/hour (presumably higher now since the state’s minimum wage this year became $13/hour).
• The child-care industry needs government aid because private funds alone aren’t enough, according to a U.S. Treasury report, “The Economic of Child Care Supply in the United States,” which said, “Sound economic principles explain why relying on private money to provide child care is bound to come up short.”
• 10.2% of parents sacrifice jobs or work hours to ensure their kids are cared for, FFY said.
  Necessity of lives

Child care is not a luxury. It’s necessary and it’s important for kids’ growth.

Early childhood is vital for infants’ and toddlers’ maturation: “90% of the brain develops before age 5,” according to neuroscience and behavioral research shared by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Further, there’s a social benefit.

“Children benefit enormously from high-quality early childhood settings that nurture and support healthy development, all while laying the foundation for future success by supporting early learning skills,” according to the U.S. Treasury.

AEC vice president Leslie Boissiere adds, “Everyone benefits from a strong economy, and we need to ease the burden on families so that the economy can grow and families can thrive.”

However, too many people still don’t recognize the pressure on working parents. “I don’t mind paying for day care if the quality of care is there, [but] some days you walk into the facility and it stinks of poopy diapers [and] some rooms would have two or three activities for the day then the rest of the time would be ‘free time,’ AKA play time,” Jennifer says.

KJ adds, “Finding childcare is stressful. In the beginning, I felt as though I had little to no options. Most people don’t realize how particular you have to be with an in-home day-care environment because many are not licensed.”

October looks to be more stressful.