Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children

COVID-19 has not only created a health crisis and an economic crisis, but also a child care crisis.

A persistent and troubling concern is that child care programs that closed during the pandemic will shut down permanently, and parents in need of this care won’t be able to return to work, crippling the economy’s ability to stabilize.

There is, however, hope.

As the country rebuilds, it could invest wisely in child care programs, helping them to recover and emerge stronger.

Here are three takes on how this could occur.

*

Families and businesses benefit from child care, JD Chesloff explains in a blog for ReadyNation, a part of Council for a Strong America, a national nonprofit that promotes children’s success. Chesloff is the executive director of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and a ReadyNation advisory board member.

“Child care allows parents to work, be more productive while on the job, and reach higher levels of professional achievement. Nurturing learning environments prepare young children for kindergarten and future achievement in school and, eventually, in the workplace.”

But the child care sector has struggled, Chesloff adds, pointing to the ReadyNation report “Want to Grow the Economy? Fix the Child Care Crisis,” which notes that “86 percent of primary caregivers have seen negative impacts at work due to infant-and-toddler child care shortfalls,” a problem that “costs the US economy $57 billion every year in lost revenue, productivity, and earnings.”

The pandemic has made things worse.

Help, Chesloff says, should come from “timely federal relief.”

“While I was heartened to see Congress respond to this need and include specific child care relief in the CARES Act, more must be done.”

“Congress must designate additional relief funding to providers nationwide.”

*

Another perspective on how to save the nation’s child care system comes from MassBudget, the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.

MassBudget estimates that because of the COVID-19- forced closures, child care programs in Massachusetts have lost as much as $536 million.

The crisis has also hit families hard. “Emerging research about COVID-19 suggests that families of color, particularly Black families, have been disproportionately affected by the virus; while data from Massachusetts shows that people of color have dramatically less wealth and fewer financial assets to fall back on to address the crisis.”

Worse, programs that reopen could see their costs go up by as much as 20 percent as they meet safety requirements. MassBudget estimates that the state’s programs would need $30 million in supplemental funding for five months, a total of $150 million.

Add up the lost revenues and the reopening costs, and it would take $690 million over the next five months, an “unprecedented investment” that would “highlight the vital role of early education for our children, our families, and for our economic recovery.”

Where should this funding come from? Massachusetts should use its savings, increase revenues, and seek more federal aid.

*

In the document “Open Strong: Workgroup Report on Advocacy and Child Care Reopening,” the Alliance for Early Success calls on advocates to encourage state leaders to address “five crucial issue areas:

• health, safety, and quality

• parents’ ability and willingness to send children to child care

• child care availability and affordability

• transitioning from emergency child care, and

• child care infrastructure

Amy O’Leary, director of Strategies for Children’s Early Education for All Campaign, was a member of the Open Strong working group.

The report also highlights states that have made important progress. Among them:

• Colorado, where the “child care agency worked with FEMA to order diapers, wipes, and some food supplies and to distribute them to regional family resource centers where providers could pick them up”

• Michigan, where the state’s “Child Care Relief Fund, which provides grants to the state’s child care providers, allows license-exempt subsidized providers to be eligible for a one-time payment of $550”

• Oregon, where the “Department of Consumer and Business Services (the regulatory agency for insurance providers in Oregon) released guidance to all insurance companies that they must cover child care providers for any infectious disease issues including COVID-19,” and

• Illinois, which has “taken steps to use some of its non-CCDBG state CARES dollars to provide Business Interruption Grants,” a portion of which are “available to child care programs (including private pay) that had to close due to COVID-19”

As the report concludes:

“Most parents cannot afford to pay the true cost of quality child care and child care programs struggle to cover operating costs, especially with the increased costs associated with operating safely during the pandemic. Furthermore, access to quality child care is too often determined by poverty, race, and geography. Our current child care system fails to advance equitable outcomes for all children, families, and early childhood professionals.”

The country should address this failure and commit to doing much more for families and businesses and for long-term national prosperity.