For Immediate Release
SAVANNAH, GA – It’s been nearly one month since the federal government shutdown, and child care educators today voiced concern over the dire circumstances facing children, families and child care educators. With funds to programs like SNAP and Head Start running out, many providers fear the families they serve will be unable make ends meet. Erin Clark, a child care organizer with 9to5 Georgia; and Tarrezz Thompson, a child care provider in Ohio, expressed concern for the families they work with on a day-to-day basis. You can watch/listen to their comments here and here.
“The people we work with in Georgia will feel real, tangible, deep cuts of not only the government shutdown but proposed budget cuts,” said Erin Clark, an organizer with 9to5 Georgia. “We are seeing that many Head Start programs will be facing dire circumstances come November 1 when over 140 programs will not receive their funding if the government shutdown continues. Not being able to access child care, Head Start programs, will impact parents’ ability to go to work and to continue contributing to their workplaces.
“We also know that early childhood educators in Georgia largely rely on programs like SNAP, so we are going to see big impacts not just on families but also for our early childhood educators,” said Clark. “There are a number of providers who will pay from their own pockets to help subsidize child care for parents who may not be able to pay that child care bill week-to-week because they feel very deeply for these experiences that parents are going through. This government shutdown is just highlighting the continued need for long-term investment in child care so that our providers are able to respond to these moments and are better funded.” According to the First Five Years Fund, one in three child care providers is facing food insecurity. Losing access to SNAP will have massive ripple effects on the child care industry, both for families and for providers.
“Hearing that families will be in a place where they might not have access to food subsidies, means that we must figure out how we can support them,” said Tarrezz Thompson, an Ohio child care provider and advocate with The CEO Project. “We don’t
want to parents in a position where they’re having to make difficult choices [about how to eat].”
“This is not the first time I’ve had to operate in a space where we’re dealing with food insecurity with our children, but my program was in a more stable space when that was happening,” Thompson added.
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