Emergency monthly payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will end for Ohioans in February. The Akron Beacon Journal explains why and offers resources here. | |
“Throughout history, many national programs serving women and children have grown out of grassroots local and state efforts. By 1925, 40 states had developed their own public aid programs for poor mothers, which essentially became the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Often led by women organizing for change, many of them mothers, local efforts to end child labor and provide free school lunches eventually led to the development of national policies.” | |  |
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Who:
Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman
Where:
"The road to universal childcare will be local" in The Hill
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A bill signed by Gov. DeWine last week expands state adoption incentives for adoptive families. The available grants range from $10,000 for all adoptions, $15,000 for adoptions by former foster families, and $20,000 for families adopting a child with special needs. It also provides a $2,500 college grant for all adoptees. | |
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State
Ohio has won a $48 million federal Preschool Development Grant (PDG) to help the state increase family access and engagement, provide care to more vulnerable children, improve coordination among programs, and more.
New legislation will provide state grants for families to support the adoption process - $10,000 for families adopting a child; $15,000 for families who adopt after fostering a child; and $20,000 for families who adopt a child with special needs. Cleveland.com explains more.
Ohio legislators also passed a bill intended to address future teacher shortages by allowing former educators to return to classrooms through a two-year temporary educator license.
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Join us for the first Crane Research Forum of 2023 on Wednesday, February 1st at 12 pm. Dr. Matt Brock, Crane faculty associate, associate professor of special education, and faculty affiliate at the Nisonger Center, will discuss research on what recess looks like for elementary students with significant disabilities. Register here. | |
Action for Children recently announced two new programs to provide support and training to both home and center child care providers. The Village Staffed Family Child Care Network (SFCCN) is specifically for family child care providers in Central Ohio to connect with professionals and receive support with quality improvement, technical assistance, and professional development. Learn more here. The Business and Operational Support Services program (The BOSS) program is for both home-based and center-based child care providers who are looking to gain skills and knowledge necessary to fully manage their businesses. Learn more here. | |
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Bipartisan Policy Center, Children’s Equity Project, and Start Early will discuss the success of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships on Monday, January 23rd at 3 pm. Register here.
Join Groundwork Ohio next Wednesday, January 25th at 10 am for a webinar unveiling a state child health dashboard created with Health Policy Institute of Ohio. Register here.
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In a plan announced this week, Hawaii is aiming to make preschool available to all 3- and 4-year-olds by 2032. Currently, only about half of children these ages are attending preschool, with the state estimating that there are more than 9,000 children whose parents cannot afford to send them but want to. $200 million was approved by the state’s legislature last year to build the 465 new classrooms they’ll need to realize their goal.
The small town of Greenville, Maine heard that its main child care center was planning to close in December 2021 and that’s when local leaders and residents rallied together to keep it open. Parents and residents formed a foundation dedicated to finding solutions to the limited child care supply. Its next venture is using $1.5 million in federal funds to build a new child care center in the town to serve more children.
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A piece in The Conversation explores data on U.S. birth rates, which have fallen recently “to the lowest level in a century.” The authors describe their demographic research and how at least part of the birth rate decline can be attributed to factors like birth control access and a later average start on parenthood. They name the cost of parenting as one key barrier to having children, including the cost of child care.
We don’t typically read articles whose primary source is Tik Tok – but this one is interesting. It describes the challenges of parenting (motherhood specifically) when the cost of child care is so high and when “choosing to follow their ‘village’ and live close to where they grew up” may make more financial sense than it has in the past.
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A new paper reports on seven studies of over 10,000 children from Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and Canada, in which researchers examined possible associations between time spent in center-based care among toddlers/preschoolers and presence of “externalizing behaviors” such as hitting, biting, or bullying. One concern about existing research is that families who use center-based care likely differ in many ways from families who do not use center-based care. This paper addressed this issue by looking at how changes in childcare use by the same child over time relates to subsequent changes in externalizing behaviors. The researchers concluded that there was no evidence of such a relationship; in other words, more time spent in child care did not have the negative behavioral result that some other research has shown. The Hechinger Report contextualizes the paper’s findings and what it means for a body of research that has delivered “mixed findings” and has come to represent a “controversial issue” according to the study authors. | |
This edition written by: Jamie O'Leary and Caitlin Lennon | | | | |
