News Update

Child care providers demand help amid deepening crisis triggered by pandemic

More than 5,700 California family child care providers have been forced to close their doors in 2020, according to Child Care Providers United, a partnership of United Domestic Workers (UDW) and SEIU Locals 99 and 521, which are located in Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego. After months of calling for action, the union today announced the filing of an unfair labor practice charge against the state of California, arguing that the state has refused to work collaboratively with providers.

“We are filing an unfair practice charge today to enforce that process so that we can urgently reach an agreement with the state about how to keep child care open,” said Max Arias, chairman of CCPU and executive director of SEIU Local 99. “The state is shutting the door in our face, and we, in turn, are having to shut the doors on families around California.”

The union represents about 40,000 family child care providers, most of whom have received subsidies for at least one child in the last year. Providers receive payments from the state when they care for children from low-income families who have been approved for subsidies.

Child care providers are asking the state to increase reimbursement rates for providers who tend to children in distance learning, provide financial support to providers who have to close their doors in the wake of Covid-19 exposure and expedite the reimbursement of family fees, for which the Legislature allocated funding on Oct. 21. 

“To put it plainly, child care providers were barely getting by before the pandemic. Now, we’re not getting by at all,” said Charlotte Neal, who has been a family child care provider for 19 years in Sacramento. “As this pandemic rages on and our challenges as providers mount, the state is not working with us to limit the impacts on providers and keep us in business or to ensure frontline workers have access to the care they need. We need action from the state. And we need it now.”


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