(Radio Iowa) – Legislators have overwhelmingly voted to permanently make most child care workers in Iowa — regardless of their income — eligible for state assistance to cover child care costs for their own kids. Child care workers who provide direct services to kids for at least 32 hours a week have been eligible under a pilot program and the bill that’s cleared the House and Senate would make the benefit permanent. Representative Ryan Weldon, a Republican from Ankeny, says Iowa has a balance of over 100-MILLION in its Child Care Development Fund to pay for the benefit.
“We’ve been providing this coverage through a pilot program since July of 2023,” Weldon said. “Since then, 2105 families have been served.” Representative Tracy Ehlert, a Democrat from Cedar Rapids, is an early childhood education consultant. “As I have talked to different programs, this is the number one thing that they said needed to stay in place to help them,” Ehlert said. “It’s helping communities, it’s helping children, it’s helping our early childhood workforce.”
The bill passed the House over a month ago and it cleared the Senate unanimously on Monday. Senator Sarah Trone Garriot, a Demcorat from West Des Moines, says there’s been robust participation in the pilot program. “I heard from so many child care providers that this was the make-or-break thing to keep people in the profession, because a lot of our child care providers are parents of young children,” Trone Garriot said, “and so this is a benefit that helps them to continue to work in that field.”
The program is estimated to cost nearly 12-MILLION dollars in the next state budgeting year, with the federal government supplying about a fourth of that money.
