Today, Prince George’s Child Resource Center submitted testimony on the Maryland state budget to the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee’s Education, Business and Administration Subcommittee.
In the testimony, Jennifer Iverson, Executive Director expressed gratitude for the increasing the payment rate for the Child Care Scholarship program and working to speed up the timeline for investment so it made immediate impact.
The Resource Center urges action to maintain and grow investments in child care, and also to support investments in crucial programs such as home visiting and the Maryland Infants and Toddlers Program.
Testimony is one way we can communicate the realities of the child care crisis we face. Jennifer noted, “We have a crisis in our county: the number of licensed child care centers and family child care homes is decreasing. We are also troubled that in Prince George’s County, only 16% of family child care providers and only 33% of child care centers are willing to enroll families who pay with subsidy/scholarship. This matters for families with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children. We can change this, and help child care programs to open and stay open successfully and offer more choices for families, when we make sure that all the pieces and parts of policy ideas come together.”
Click here to read the testimony.
Let’s work together and recognize the role that Child Care Scholarship and child care licensing play in ensuring that the child care workforce and our families can thrive, and ensure that efforts to expand early education opportunities reach our communities.
Posted on January 30, 2020
