U.S. Sen. Jack Reed today joined parents, children and child care providers at the West Bay Community Action Children's Center in Warwick and the Carter Day Nursery in South Providence to announce new legislation which will make quality child care more available and affordable to working families. Yet the United States ranks at the bottom of all Western industrialized nations with regard to access to affordable, safe, quality child care. When it comes to the state of child care in the United States, we cannot afford to sit idly by.
Research shows that early learning and nurturing care is crucial to healthy early brain development.
Unfortunately, because of the high cost of child care many working families have no other choice but to place their children in substandard child care. Keeping a child in child care can typically cost more than a four year college education. Working families with one child can easily find themselves spending over 25 percent of their monthly income on child care. This bill will help to make quality child care affordable to more working families. Reed, a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said the bill has already received support from USA Child Care, the Children's Defense Fund, YMCA of the USA, Catholic Charities of the USA, the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, the Center for the Child Care Work Force and the Child Welfare League of America.