GREEN BAY (NBC26) — Child Care Counts, a pandemic-era federal funding program, will stop at the end of June, forcing childcare providers to raise their rates or close their doors.
- Child Care Counts supported more than 5,700 programs across the state, according to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association.
- Kathy Wolfe, a provider in Green Bay, says she's forced to raise her rates because the Child Care Counts funding will end.
- WECA says without further funding or state support, "what’s already a critical issue will be a crisis."
Kathy Wolfe is the owner of Kathy's Kids Home Child Care in Green Bay. She watches eight kids from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday.
“You are everything: you’re the owner, the director, the cook, the janitor, the caregiver, you take care of everything," she says. "It’s a lot to handle.”
She's been running a home-based childcare center for 25 years. She has a master's degree in education and completes over 100 hours of training each year.
“People think of us as glorified babysitters, so there’s not a lot of attention or desire to help us," she says. "Yet, birth to five, the brain is growing so much and there’s so much learning, and so much that’s happening with these children that we’re taking care of that we need a little more support.”
Wolfe says she tries to keep rates affordable for families and charges below-average tuition, but she struggles to make a profit.
“I get it, I know the cost of living is affecting everybody," she says. "It's expensive, like I barely make $20/ hr."
Since the pandemic, Wolfe has been getting some financial support from the Child Care Counts program, which was created during the pandemic to help childcare centers remain open.
“It helped me to be able to make sure that I can still stay high quality, and keep my doors open and affordable for families that needed to work," she says. "The money was nice, but it didn’t cover everything, we still pay a lot of money out of pocket to run our business."
The funding has slowly decreased– Wisconsin providers are receiving about half as much as they did in 2020, according to the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association.
“It wasn’t money that could have been doing other things," Ruth Schmidt, executive director of WECA, says. "It was during the pandemic, and it was an investment that the federal government was making into ensuring that childcare programs could keep their doors open during COVID.”
Child Care Counts supported more than 5,700 programs across the state, according to WECA.
On June 30, the funding will completely stop.
"I know a lot of providers who will have to raise their rates, I’m going to be raising my rates as well," Wolfe says. "Either that or just closing doors, and it’s going to be a huge issue because childcare is already in demand, and there’s going to be a lot less availability because of it.”
A report from WECA and the Institute for Research on Poverty finds that 80% of childcare providers say they will raise their rates by at least $26 / week.
The report also finds that one in four childcare providers are likely to close or significantly reduce services.
"We know that parents are already tapped out, they will not be able to sustain increases in tuition," Schmidt says. "Despite how much they want that care or may need that care, prices will get to a point that they simply cannot pay for it.”
Schmidt says childcare has been a fragile industry for a while, but the Child Care Counts payments were able to stabilize the field.
"We were losing childcare programs right and left across the state of Wisconsin," she says. "Child Care Counts programs- stabilization payments- did what they needed to do. Over the course of the last years– 2020 to 2026– what we have seen over that time period is that we have stopped seeing programs close.”
Schmidt says losing childcare programs impacts the state as a whole.
“We are losing all this potential revenue every year because we don’t have adequate care for parents to be able to go to work," she says. “It’s such a critical issue, and if we take the wrong step and don’t do something, what’s already a critical issue will be a crisis.”
Wolfe says she worries what the loss of programs will mean for young children and families.
“I’m worried that children are going to be just put in front of the TV, or left home alone," she says. "There’s so many different scenarios that it’s scary to think about especially with how important those first five years are in a child’s development."
She says more than financial support, Child Care Counts showed her the state valued her work.
“Through the program and funding and recognition, that’s where we were like hey, we are somebody," she says. "We need to emphasize that we’re important.... Acknowledging that we’re here and that we’re valuable, we're essential, we're professionals."
WECA is hosting a gubernatorial candidate forum on candidate issues. It will be held on July 19 in Madison, but people can also attend virtually. More information can be found here.
