By Carol Burnett, Executive Director

Published in Clarion Ledger

The recent COVID-19 relief package together with the one about to be approved by Congress and signed by President Biden could bring over $650 million into Mississippi’s Child Care Payment Program operated by the Department of Human Services. This includes $330 million to increase the number of children served in Mississippi’s Child Care Payment Program, and another $320 million intended to shore up the child care sector during this pandemic.

This increase in funding for child care assistance would allow Mississippi to serve 79% of our state’s eligible children. Child care costs $5,760 per child in the DHS Child Care Payment Program, a lower amount than most child care centers charge. If you apply this cost to the funding increase, it shows that Mississippi can serve another 57,000 in addition to the 31,000 DHS reports are already being served. This new funding would bring us closer than we’ve ever been as a state to serving all those children who qualify.

Mississippi’s low-wage working parents need help with child care costs. Child care is a private service and the tuition is too expensive for low-wage working parents to afford without assistance. This new child care money is hugely important to help these parents go to work and remain employed.

Mississippi has been working to improve our state’s workforce participation rate. This Child Care Payment program is a work support program, allowing parents with young children to enter the workforce by making their child care affordable.

CCPP requires work and low pay, a combination that makes it impossible for a parent to afford child care without assistance. IHL reports that more parents with young children would enter the workforce if they had affordable child care. CCPP provides that. Also, CCPP allows parents to choose their own provider so the services they select cover the hours and days they work, unlike other early childhood programs that are often part-day and/or closed in the summer months.

This influx of child care funding couldn’t come at a better time. The funds available to shore up child care can be used to help with child care center operational costs related to the pandemic. Providers struggling to stay open during the pandemic have experienced reduced enrollment in order to accommodate smaller class sizes, higher operational costs to protect health and safety, and higher labor costs as more staff are required to sanitize and cover smaller groups of children.

We applaud the Senate and expect the House will award these additional child care funds. We encourage DHS to direct all these needed funds to reach those unserved but eligible parents so they can afford to go to work, and to direct these funds to CCPP providers who have been struggling to keep their heads above water to serve CCPP parents.