The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning to consumers and health care providers about hand sanitizer products that are labeled as containing ethanol (also known as ethyl alcohol) but that have tested positive for methanol contamination. Methanol (i.e., methyl alcohol or wood alcohol) is a substance that can be toxic when absorbed through the skin or ingested and can be life-threatening when ingested. As per the FDA news update hyperlinked below, “Methanol is not an acceptable active ingredient for hand sanitizers and must not be used due to its toxic effects. FDA’s investigation of methanol in certain hand sanitizers is ongoing. The agency will provide additional information as it becomes available.”

Consumers who have been exposed to a hand sanitizer containing methanol and are experiencing symptoms should seek immediate treatment for the potential toxic effects of methanol poisoning, which can include nausea, vomiting, headaches, blurred vision, permanent blindness, and seizures. Although people of all ages are at risk for methanol poisoning, “young children who accidentally ingest these products and adolescents and adults who drink these products as an alcohol (ethanol) substitute are most at risk.”

Please see the full FDA news update on hand sanitizers with methanol for further information.

Office of Child Care

Administration for Children and Families

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

We STILL NEED $50 billion for child care!

Our Legislators are still discussing The Child Care is Essential Act. Contact your Senators now and let them know we need more funding! 

Thank you for using your voice!

Here is our Executive Director, Cindy reminding us how important YOUR VOICE IS! Watch the video.

The National Child Care Association would like to extend a great big “thank you” to our current and past members. We have 11,000 supporters and counting. If you are an individual who works in the field, in a field that supports childcare, or are a parent that uses childcare, we invite you to become a member of NCCA today! Individuals may join for $30 a year, while providers and businesses that support NCCA and our advocacy can join for $100 a year. 

Did you know that some of you are able to join through your state association? Specifically in the states of Maryland, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Utah. If you are a member of one of these state associations, you can take advantage of NCCA benefits as well! 

Our number one benefit is advocacy. We work in Washington DC on making sure that we provide a voice in all the legislation, rules, and regulations that trickle down to benefit quality child care programs. We need your continued support now more than ever. Creating a unified voice for early child care is critical and we are working on your behalf to ensure we are heard! 

Additionally, members enjoy unique savings through our national partners. Namely, providers receive 10% off their first-time accreditation fees and national credentials with the National Early Childhood Program Accreditation (NECPA).

We are also excited to announce we have entered a partnership with Quorum and Kaplan Learning Company providing professional developmental training that will help you get a credential in early child care (which we need more and more of). For the price of $79.95, you can take the hours you need to obtain those credentials.

We have many more member benefits which you can read about here: https://www.nccanet.org/page/Benefits

If you are a former member of NCCA, we truly appreciate your past membership to NCCA and we want to invite you to support us again. In addition to the many benefits offered, your annual commitment of $100 or less will come back to you through discount programs and other member benefits! 

Please help us continue our mission by becoming a member today.

Urgent: we need your help NOW more than ever!! We are waiting for the Senate to release another COVID-19 relief package. We are NOT giving up in our pursuit of the $50 billion funding relief request. Therefore, we are organizing our next Call-In Day for this Thursday, July 16th.

Senate Republicans are expected to introduce their next COVID package on July 20th. The Senate’s last day in session is August 7th which leaves little time to respond to the package once it’s presented. Therefore, our advocacy is crucial in the coming weeks. We’ve heard that the package will have small provisions for housing, child care, and food assistance. That means it is up to our advocacy to put the pressure on to not only increase the size of the package but to target relief to the most in need, including to secure at least $50 billion in child care funding needed to save our system. This is critical. We encourage everyone to reach out to their delegation members, particularly in the Senate, and the makeup of your delegation will determine the strategy.

Some talking points:
For Republicans who are in leadership – educate them on the scope of the need, especially how child care is impacting by states reopening and the cascading impact of limited K-12 availability in the fall, and the structure of the stabilization fund through the exiting pathway of the CCDBG being the right mechanism.  

For Republicans who are not in leadership positions – do the education above and make sure to ask them to weigh in with leadership that child care funding needs to be a priority in the next package (and if you can talk to them about funding, do it!).

For Democrats who are in leadership – educate them about the Child Care is Essential Act, and why at least $50B in direct assistance through a stabilization fund (that goes through CCDBG) needs to be in the next package.

For Democrats who are already cosponsoring the CCE Act – ask them to continue to raise awareness publicly, weigh in with other members to get them on the bill, and ask them to weigh in with leadership that this is a priority for the next fight.

For Democrats who are not cosponsoring the CCE Act – educate them about the funding needs and the bill, and see if you can get them to cosponsor.

America is in the middle of a child care crisis – please, please help us reach our goal of $50 billion in relief funding by joining us in our next Call-In Day, Thursday, July 16th!

Recently, NCCA director Cindy Lehnhoff met with CEO of Inspire Care 360, Tony D’Agostino to discuss several key topics concerning childcare in America today.

The first item of importance is the need for advocacy. Cindy explains that “we” (those who work in and support child care) have always needed advocacy, but we need it now more than ever. What childcare lacks is a voice that has come together in the industry to speak up for themselves. Cindy has been a part of this industry for 40 years as a teacher, director, district manager, and vice president, and therefore has experience balancing quality and financial excellence and understands the NEED for this voice.

She explains that if we pulled together, the industry could be a part of putting in rules and regulations in place and ask for the funding to do it. When US Congress steps up and says that they are going to take the initiative to change something about childcare to make it high quality, they write bills and budgets, but they don’t actually take the time to “cost it out”. They don’t look at what it costs the industry, and rarely are practitioners brought to the table to give their opinions and present the reality of the situation.

For example, when it was decided that every licensed childcare center would do FBI fingerprinting, it put a lot of cost on providers. The fingerprinting itself is a good thing, but there should have been funding provided. In this industry, it often feels like lawmakers and institutional higher-ups don’t give the actual providers a say.

Cindy notes that legislators respond better if they hear from their constituents, their voters. Cindy is calling for advocacy at the national level. Most advocacy the providers are participating in is at the state level. Which is good, but states can only do so much. The federal government only provides so much support. Cindy believes we are not asking for the right things at the federal level as an industry, but the way it works is that you need money or a big voice to be heard. Our voice has to come together to accomplish more.

The rest of the webinar goes on to expand creating one ECE voice post COVID-19, what if we had been better prepared for Covid-19, and NCCA’s vision, mission, and values. To watch, please click here: https://www.inspirecare360.com/creating-one-ece-voice-post-covid-19/.

Our friends at Child Care Aware asked us to share this information with you.

We wanted to send a quick request for your help in spreading the word about critical study of the likely spread of COVID-19 in child care programs being conducted by the Yale School of Medicine, “COVID-19 Infection Rates and Mitigation in U.S. Child Care Programs: A Natural Experiment of Critical Implications for Reopening Child Care and Public Schools (PDF download)” (Yale IRB # 2000028232). 

This is one of the largest workforce epidemiological studies ever attempted-in fact, almost 100,000 child care providers have already responded! But, we still need your help in reaching the massive number of child care respondents needed to conduct a study of this size. Please share this linked email with child care providers in your community.

As a reminder, the survey takes 12-20 minutes and is hosted through a secured online survey platform and maintained in a de-identified state to ensure confidentiality. It asks about COVID-19 exposure and symptoms, as well as methods of reducing the spread of the virus. We have to act fast in getting data- before child care programs reopen-in order to generate useful policy recommendations. 

Thank you in advance for sharing the survey with your community and for your continued work in child care.

As an increasing number of cities and states move toward reopening, the child care industry is still reeling from the impact of coronavirus. Without child care, there will be barriers for parents who want to return to or find work. That’s the urgent message Child Care Aware is sharing with its new campaign: No Child Care, No Recovery (#NoChildCareNoRecovery).

The goal of this new video series is to highlight the struggles that families and child care providers are facing during this time, and how vital a strong, stable child care industry will be to an effective economic recovery. While the Senate considers the best path forward for additional COVID-19 relief, make sure they know, #NoChildCareNoRecovery. Please email and tweet at your Senator now to share these stories! 

Visit the #NoChildCareNoRecovery Story Hub (located at: https://www.childcareaware.org/coronavirus/child-care-and-covid-19-stories-from-the-field/) 

Here is an excerpt from one story. 

Dana and Scott Barnhart are the owners of Kiddie Academy of Kent Island in Stevensville, Maryland. They have proudly owned and operated their center for 5 years. Dana, along with her staff, has worked tirelessly to achieve a rating of 5 in the state Quality Rating Improvement System: Maryland EXCELS. Unfortunately, in mid- April the center had a COVID-19 exposure and they had to shut down for a minimum of two weeks. They had planned to reopen on May 4th but after learning only 20 children were going to return, they decided not to move forward at that time. At this level of enrollment, their projected loss would average about $30,000 a month. They had reached a point of having to consider closing forever.

There are other obstacles that make it difficult for the Barnhart’s as well as other providers and families in Maryland to navigate the crisis that the Covid-19 pandemic has created for child care:

– In order to meet social distancing guidelines throughout the day, child care providers have to lower their operational capacity to keep children further apart. As a result of this, more qualified staff must be present in the center to ensure that the minimal licensing standard of keeping all children within sight and sound at all times is maintained. Reducing the operational capacity decreases a center’s weekly revenue while having to provide additional staff increases operational costs.

– Middle class working parents spend on average 10-14% of their income for child care. Therefore, they cannot bear the burden of an increase to the cost of care. We know from experience that when child care cost increases, families are often forced to choose cheaper unsafe options which do not include a high-quality early education program like the one offered at Kiddy Academy of Kent Island.

– Operational cost has also increased to allow for additional cleaning and sanitizing throughout the day. While high-quality child care providers have always been extremely mindful and attentive to preventing the spread of illness, the COVID-19 pandemic has required staff to triple their daily cleaning routines which, of course, has increased their expenses. Locating cleaning and sanitation supplies has been exceedingly difficult.

We encourage you to read through other stories to truly grasp why we need our Senators to come through and fund child care- it’s essential! 

Rep. DeLauro, Rep. Scott, and Sen. Murray (along with other cosponsors) have introduced a bill providing $50 billion in funding to stabilize the child care industry. This bill is a crucial part of the strategy to elevate the needs of the child care field in the ongoing COVID-19 relief legislation conversation.

We know that child care providers are absolutely essential to this nation and have been among the hardest hit for the COVID-19 pandemic. About half of providers have stayed open throughout this crisis to serve children of other essential workers so that those workers can serve their communities. Even so, with the reduction in enrollment and the consequential drop in revenue, child care providers are struggling. Some providers are even facing closure. According to analysis from the Center for American Progress, the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to a permanent loss of nearly 4.5 million child care slots, leaving millions of families without the child care they need to return to work. And Americans are indeed returning to work more and more as the days go on. So how can we ensure they will have access to necessary and essential child care?

The Child Care Is Essential Act would provide grant funding to child care providers to stabilize the child care sector and support providers to safely reopen and operate. Administered through the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) lead agency of each state, tribe or territory, grants would be available to licensed, regulated, or registered child care providers that are currently open or temporarily closed due to COVID-19, regardless of whether they had previously received funding through CCDBG. Grant awards would be determined by providers’ pre-COVID-19 operating costs and adjusted to reflect the additional cost of providing care due to the pandemic. Grants would be equitably distributed to eligible child care centers, home-based child care providers, and family child care homes.

Initial cost estimates suggest that modifications necessary to respond to COVID-19 may increase providers’ costs by as much as 30 percent. The $50 billion in funding will help providers not only open but purchase
necessary supplies, reduce group sizes and adjust staffing to lower the risk of infection, and modify classroom space and materials.

We need you to act to pass this bill! Have you called or emailed your members of Congress to let them know the urgency in passing a bill that provides $50 billion to childcare? Find out more about contacting your representations at nccanet.org.

Due to the recent pandemic facing our country, it has been found that families are struggling a bit with the balancing act of parents trying to both work from home and take care of their children at the same time.  With a small application process (that will NOT deny you), you can get the help you and your child(ren) so desperately need to ensure they are not only getting a healthy dose of socializing with their peers, but also continuing to receive education as well.

Lead Agencies have the flexibility to define which workers are essential, in accordance with any relevant State, Territorial, and Tribal laws or policies. Lead Agencies should consult with their jurisdiction’s chief executive, and may want to consider:
– Health care and public health workers
– Law enforcement, public safety, and first responders
– Child protective services workers, those who provide services in the child welfare system, and other critical social services workers
– Food and agriculture workers (including grocery store and restaurant workers and food truck delivery drivers)
– Child care workers
– Utility employees
– Water and wastewater employees
– Transportation and logistics workers
– Public works employees
– Communications and information technology workers
– Other community-based government operations and essential function employees
– Critical manufacturing workers
– Hazardous materials workers
– Financial services employees
– Chemical workers
– Defense industrial base employees

Building on these existing options, the CARES Act provides additional flexibility for providing direct child care services to essential workers. Lead Agencies may use CARES Act funds to provide child care assistance to health care sector employees, emergency responders, sanitation workers, and other workers deemed essential by public officials during the response to COVID-19, without regard to the income eligibility requirements. Therefore, Lead Agencies may provide CCDF subsidies to essential workers whose income exceeds 85 percent of State median income.

If you are nervous about the safety of your children going back to a childcare facility, there is no reason to worry! Childcare workers of high-quality centers have always instilled cleanliness (especially hand washing!) into their curriculum, but now, centers are focusing on extra sanitizing as well as reducing the number of children per class so that there allows for more space (for distancing).

Please use what is being provided to you and APPLY TODAY! Visit: https://www.nccanet.org/page/Advocacy and scroll to the bottom and select “State-Level Information for Essential Workers Seeking Child Care”.