If you’ve tried to apply for child care assistance recently, a message on your county’s human services website may have sent chills down your spine: Due to budgetary constraints, the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program is on an enrollment freeze.
In more than a dozen counties — including Denver, Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson, Weld, Mesa and El Paso — eligible families who did not apply for assistance prior to the freeze cannot access vital funding that would offset the cost of having a licensed child care professional care for their child while they go to work. While the freeze hit many Denver metro area counties at the beginning of the year, counties such as Larimer County have been on a freeze since October.
Without long-term public investment to stabilize the child care system and increase affordability for working families, Colorado’s economic growth could slow to a crawl at a time when it has already dropped from fifth in the nation to 41st.
As philanthropic leaders well-positioned to improve early care and education in Colorado, even we know there’s not enough private or public funding available today to solve the larger problem.
Colorado’s child care system has been underfunded for decades, leaving it financially broke and structurally broken.
The reality is that federal stimulus dollars provided during the COVID-19 pandemic have nearly dried up. State funding is also running dry, with much of it admirably used to pay child care providers more to cover the increased costs of providing quality care.
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There simply isn’t enough money to go around, and the system is forcing us to choose between ensuring livable wages for child care educators and providing low-income families the subsidies needed to access high-quality, affordable care.
But focusing on this impossible choice is blinding us to the broader economic consequences that could impact entire communities if we don’t widen our view of the problem.
When child care educators move on to higher-paying jobs — because they’re twice as likely as others to live below the poverty line — classrooms close, and parents can’t get the essential care that allows them to go to work.
When care is too expensive, parents also can’t go to work. When parents can’t work, business declines across key industries employing thousands of Coloradans in aerospace, tech, defense and homeland security, manufacturing, food and agriculture, and more.
Half of Colorado parents report they’ve sacrificed work hours, taken unpaid time off, quit jobs or avoided job searches due to child care needs. More than 10,000 Colorado mothers have left the workforce due to child care issues. And, once an individual leaves the workforce, replacing them is neither easy nor cheap.
The state has more open jobs per capita than anywhere in the country, and gone are the days when we could rely on attracting skilled talent from out of state, as the number of working-age adults moving to Colorado annually has dropped to less than half of pre-pandemic levels. Every time someone leaves a job, it can cost employers twice that employee’s annual salary to replace them.
Overall, the lack of adequate child care for infants and toddlers costs the state $2.7 billion annually in lost earnings, productivity and revenue.
As devastating as the child care funding freeze is, it also presents an opportunity for all of us — families, educators, providers, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, policymakers and philanthropy — to recommit to our values and reimagine a child care system that works in every Colorado community.
Child care is not just a public good. It’s the engine that fuels our economy, and it requires long-term public investment to operate effectively.
We’re ready to play our part. We invite Colorado lawmakers, business and community leaders to join us in a dialogue about how to make Colorado the best place to raise a child, build a career and cultivate an economy that creates opportunity for everyone.
Steffanie Clothier of Denver is the director of school readiness at Gary Community Ventures.
Laura Carlson of Littleton is the vice president of programs at the Buell Foundation.
Sue Renner of Denver is the strategic advisor to the David and Laura Merage Foundation.
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