Home-based child care providers reach tentative deal with the state

Child Care Providers United — the union that represents about 60,000 family child care providers in California — has reached a tentative deal with the state after its contract expired July 1.

Under the agreement, childcare providers in the union will get $90 million in one-time stabilization payments and $37 million a year for cost-of-living adjustments. They’ll also continue getting retirement and healthcare benefits, and be paid by enrollment rather than attendance.

Max Arias, chair of Child Care Providers United, said many home-based educators have had to shut their doors in recent years.

“ The rates are so low right now that providers are literally receiving $7 to $10 an hour after all the expenses are paid based on the amount of hours they work, and that is the crisis that we're seeing so having some support right now was very important,” Arias said.

The fight for higher pay

In 2019, home-based childcare providers in California who get subsidies from the state to care for lower-income families won the right to collectively bargain with the state.

Child care providers are some of the lowest paid workers in the country — a recent report found that the majority of them struggled to meet basic needs.

Arias said the new one-time stabilization payments would amount to roughly $300-$400 a child, and that the union will continue working for a new rate system to boost the amount providers get reimbursed — which they had originally expected this year. He said the union has a commitment by the state to reach an agreement on a new rate structure by the next budget cycle.

Historically, the reimbursement rates have been paid on “market rates,” which have been deflated because they’re based on what families pay. Experts call the child care industry a “broken market” — where the costs are too high for families to pay, but workers themselves are making too little to get by.

Arias said a new rate structure would allow for providers to get paid the  real cost to provide care.

"Then there will be true stabilization in the sense that people can actually then afford to be able to stay open," he said.