Section 1 Short title
This Act may be cited as the “Child Care Access to Resources for Early-learning Act” or the “Child CARE Act”.
Child Care Access to Resources for Early-learning Act
A BILL
To amend the Social Security Act to provide for mandatory funding, to ensure that the families that have infants and toddlers, have a family income of not more than 200 percent of the applicable Federal poverty guideline, and need child care have access to high-quality infant and toddler child care by the end of fiscal year 2026, and for other purposes.
Sec. 2 Purposes
The purposes of this Act are—
to provide funding to ensure that the families that have infants and toddlers, that have a family income of not more than 200 percent of the applicable Federal poverty guideline, and that need child care have access to high-quality infant and toddler child care by the end of fiscal year 2026, in order to promote family economic security and parental employment, to support parents in balancing work and family obligations, and to promote children’s health, early care, and learning;
to provide sufficient funding to ensure that both families and child care providers have the resources they need to support high-quality early care and learning for infants and toddlers;
to ensure that provider payment rates, for infant and toddler child care providers, are set at a level high enough to support high-quality child care for infants and toddlers, including infants and toddlers with disabilities;
to assist eligible infant and toddler child care providers in improving the quality of their programs—
by strengthening the skills, competencies, and compensation of the workforce of those providers, in a manner aligned with the report entitled “Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation”, issued by the National Academy of Sciences in April 2015; and
by helping those providers ensure that children receive the comprehensive services they need, by coordinating activities with other community service providers; and
to ensure that high-quality infant and toddler child care is a strong component of a continuum of quality early care and learning activities within States and Indian and Native Hawaiian communities, starting with prenatal care and continuing through activities in the early school years, with seamless transitions between programs.