Senator Hassan Joins in Reintroducing Affordable Child Care and Early Learning Bill

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan helped reintroduce the Child Care for Working Families Act, a comprehensive bill to ensure that hard-working families have access to affordable, high-quality child care and preschool.

“Too many working families in New Hampshire are struggling to pay for child care services, and this is a challenge I’m hearing about even more amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Senator Hassan. “In order to have a strong economic recovery, we must provide affordable, high-quality child care to help parents fully participate in the workforce. The Child Care for Working Families Act takes a comprehensive approach to solving these challenges, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to build support for this important legislation.”   

The Child Care for Working Families Act would create a federal-state partnership to ensure that families making less than 150 percent of their state’s median income do not pay more than 7 percent of their income on child care. The bill also supports access to high-quality preschool programs for 3- and 4-year olds from low- and moderate-income households. Finally, the bill would support the child care workforce by significantly improving wages and training for teachers and caregivers.

Senator Hassan is working to support children and families throughout the pandemic and beyond. The American Rescue Plan, which Senator Hassan helped pass into law, increases the child tax credit to $3,000, or $3,600 for children under the age of 6. Senator Hassan also introduced the bipartisan Improving Child Care For Working Families Act to permanently increase the amount of tax-free dollars working parents and their employers can set aside in a dependent care assistance plan (DCAP) to use toward child care expenses. In addition, the Senator recently reintroduced the bipartisan Help Grandfamilies Prevent Child Abuse Act to better support kinship caregivers – the vast majority of whom are grandparents – who have taken over as primary caregivers for children exposed to substance misuse or other trauma.

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