Pennsylvania’s Child Care System: Access, Affordability, and Quality
Infant/Toddler Contracted Slots OCDEL created an Infant/Toddler Contracted Slots Pilot to help high-quality child care providers afford the cost of caring for infants and toddlers since the cost of care is higher than providing care for preschool and school-age children. This grant program awards high-quality child care providers “slots” for each child they will serve, and the funding for the slot remains with the provider even if a child stops attending. Before this, child care providers serving infants and toddlers faced financial unpredictability as a family’s tuition could suddenly cease at any time, making it difficult to budget and plan. The pilot’s goal was to establish and study a new fiscal model that promoted equal access and supply-building of high-quality care for infants and toddlers. The two-year pilot was successful, allowing programs to achieve greater financial stability, hire and retain more qualified staff, increase classroom quality, and stabilize enrollment for infants and toddlers. Expanding the program and updating some processes will help guarantee stable funding for child care programs and help serve more children. Families not eligible to receive Child Care Works are considered private pay families. They must pay the full tuition cost directly to the child care provider administering the care. Typically, tuition rates are established based on the child’s age, with infants running the highest rates. Most providers depend on private pay families since the true cost of care is significantly more than the subsidy base payments provided for Child Care Works children. However, understanding the significant financial challenges many families with children face, there are limits to what providers can charge to ensure they enroll children and make their programs affordable. Compared to other child care providers
Determining the True Cost of Care
A robust early learning system rests on understanding the true cost of high-quality care. The price that providers charge and parents pay in a particular region underscores the need for policies to increase equitable access to high- quality care. Basing the subsidy rate on an already depressed market rate instead of the true cost of providing child care forces programs into a risky business model, reinforces low compensation for staff, and lowers quality, even when the program is committed to high quality. A cost estimation model will help Pennsylvania understand the cost of providing child care in all program types, for all ages served, at all levels of quality, in all communities. A cost estimation model incorporates available data and certain assumptions to estimate expected costs for running a child care business. 38 The assumptions used in a cost estimation model often relate to the structure of a program, which can include the number of children, the facility size, the group size, and teacher-to-child ratios, labor, materials and supplies, food service, administration, and transportation. A payment methodology based on the modeling will lead to payments that reflect the costs of providing quality child care and encourage providers to begin serving or serve more subsidy-eligible children. Using the market rate survey will only perpetuate the broken child care market. A better foundation begins with child care worker compensation and the policies and mechanisms implemented to reimburse child care programs.
Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children. Op cit
August 2023
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