On Friday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a new law into effect that helps parents who work nights.

 The First Responders Child Care Act calls for Illinois’ Department of Human Services to award grants to licensed child care facilities so they can create “off hours, night, or sleep time child care for first responders and third shift workers.”

“By creating the Off-hours Child Care Program Fund, Illinois is working to increase accessibility for parents in public service who work non-traditional hours,” State Senator Suzy Glowiak Hilton, who filed the bill, says.

State Senator Laura Murphy, who supports the law, tells WAND News, “Our first responders often work through the night to keep our community safe, like all parents, first responders struggle with child care concerns. I’m glad this legislation begins to address child care access for those men & women who sacrifice personally and physically for this job.”

Illinois’ fiscal year ’23 budget appropriates $2 million for the program, which must be implemented by July 1, 2023.

Illinois is taking an important step forward on a widespread problem.

The pandemic showed that providing child care for essential workers was a vital to keeping the country running. But even before the pandemic, the need was glaring.

Last year, the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, released a report noting that parents with NTH (nontraditional hours) schedules work across the economy in restaurants, hotels, retail, hospitals, and other entertainment venues.

The report looked at Connecticut, Oklahoma, and Washington, D.C., and found that “Kids with parents working NTH schedules are more likely to be in families who are Black, Latinx, multiracial or of another unspecified race; have lower incomes; have parents with lower levels of education; and are one-parent families.”

Illinois’ new law makes good on one of the report’s recommendations to “invest in strategies” that support a range of providers who are “willing to provide care during nontraditional hours.”

Stay tuned to see how this program is implemented and if it grows to serve more families.