On Thursday, September 14, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act. The new legistaion attempts to set down a strong marker for what is truly needed to make improvements in the nation’s child care and early childhood education systems across the fifty states. It would
On Wednesday, September 6 the Senate HELP Committee began an initial series of four hearings over two weeks. Chairman Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) struck a strong bipartisan note at the beginning of the hearing indicating that he wanted to find a basic quick bipartisan fix for some key issues and have an agreement together
The House Ways and Means Committee may meet this Wednesday to mark up a bill to reauthorize the home visiting program. Two House bills have been introduced to extend the Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program which runs out on September 30. The Republican bill (The Increasing Opportunity through Evidence-Based Home Visiting Act)
On Wednesday and Thursday of last week the Senate Appropriations Committee acted on their version of an FY 2018 Labor-HHS-Education bill. Now that the Congress has approved (on Friday) a CR that extends all FY 2018 funding until December 8, this bill will serve as a negotiating point with the House and Administration. The bill,
Child Welfare Services (Title IV-B part 1) and Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF, Title IV-B part 2) expired last year and they have a temporary extension through the end of this fiscal year. As a result of this most recent CR current funding including the court funds will continue for now. The Court Improvement
Last week the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) released a new report, The Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014: Uneven State Implementation of Key Policies. The report follows and analysis how states have attempted to implement new requirements under the federal child care programs. The NWLC report examines policy changes in four
Last week Wednesday, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a report that details the lack of child care services in 22 states. Titled, Mapping America’s Child Care Deserts, the report analyzes the locations of licensed child care providers in 22 states, covering two-thirds of the U.S. population, and finds that approximately half of
The Senate cut short their extended work schedule on Thursday when they finished work on several nominations including some from HHS. They will be out until after Labor Day. When Congress returns in September they will have a long list of items many that must be addressed by the end of the month or at
Last week’s debate and fire on repealing the Affordable Care Act was bookended by two narrow votes of 50 to 51 and 49 to 50 with three senators being the key actors. In between the fewer than a dozen votes cast it became clear that a replacement plan was not possible and any reforms or
Last week Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL) announced the introduction of a second House bill to reauthorize the home visiting program. The HomeVisiting Works Act of 2017 would extend the program for an additional five years and, similar to the goals of the Home Visiting Coalition, it would gradually increase funding to $800 million in year