Hearing Monday on Bill to dramatically increase Care 4 Kids

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The education committee will hold a hearing on Monday, March 11th starting at 10 am on SB 5, section 7 (starting on line 314) which adds children eligible for Baby Bonds (any child whose delivery was paid for by HUSKY) to the list of people eligible for Care 4 kids, about 16,000 babies a year. For a frame of reference, C4K is currently subsidizing care for 7,912 children under the age of 3.

Passage would be great, but at a cost of close to $10,000 per C4K certificate, this would require at least an additional $145 million for Care 4 Kids in FY25 or it would explode the waitlist. The cost would escalate each year as the total number of children who would be eligible would accumulate.

This is a great opportunity to talk about the Care 4 Kids waitlist and parents' need for care.  We can also talk about the need to raise C4K rates so early educators can get paid a living wage and programs could hire the staff needed to grow the supply of child care to serve all the newly eligible children.