With State House Advocacy Day approaching on Thursday, it’s a good time to ask: How are states doing on child care?

The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) has taken a look – and summed up its findings in a recent report, “Early Progress: State Child Care Assistance Policies 2019.”

Accompanying the report are a collection of fact sheets on all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

“Given the importance of child care assistance to families, it is essential for states to have strong child care assistance policies,” NWLC says in a press release.

The report and the fact sheets assess states in five key policy areas:

• income eligibility limits to qualify for child care assistance

• waiting lists for child care assistance

• the copayments required of parents receiving child care assistance

• payment rates for child care providers serving families receiving child care assistance, and

• eligibility for child care assistance for parents searching for a job

The good news:

“Between February 2018 and February 2019, states were able to make meaningful progress in their key child care assistance policies due to a historic increase of $2.37 billion approved by Congress in March 2018. The total number of children on waiting lists for child care assistance decreased by 55 percent.”

But:

“…significant gaps remain in child care funding and policies.”

Case in point:

“Total funding for child care in FY 2019—even after the increase—remained nearly $1 billion short of the total funding level in FY 2001 after adjusting for inflation.”

The fact sheet for Massachusetts is mixed.

This state does support parents by providing child care assistance to moms and dads who are looking for jobs.

However, Massachusetts’ child care costs remain troublingly high.

“In 2019, a family of three with an income at 100 percent of poverty ($21,330 a year) receiving child care assistance in Massachusetts paid $173 per month, or 10 percent of its income, in copayments.” That’s more than $2,000 for the year. Federal guidelines deem child care to be affordable when families pay no more than 7 percent of their income.

In addition, this state’s payment rates are both too low and below the federally recommended level: “Massachusetts’s monthly payment rate for center care for a four-year-old in the Northeast Region was $955, which was $495 (34 percent) below the 75th percentile of current market rates for this type of care.” Low rates make it difficult for programs to recruit and retain educators, expand support services, or make other quality improvements.

And across the state, many families are still not able to access child care at all. The fact sheet says that as of February 2019, there are nearly 19,000 Massachusetts children on the waitlist for child care subsidies.

How can advocates use this information?

By sharing it – and by passing on the crucial message from the National Women’s Law Center that when it comes to investments in child care, the country is just getting started.

As the report concludes:

“Expanded investments will allow parents to have the affordable, reliable child care they need to get and stay employed, children to have the early learning opportunities they need for their healthy and successful development, child care teachers to have the compensation they need to support themselves and their own families, and our nation to have the productive workforce it needs now and in the future for a thriving economy.”