Campaign for Children: “This is No Way to Operate a Critical Service For Children and Families!” How the Lack of Long-term Investment in After-school and Early Childhood Education Programs Affects NYC’s Children and Families

Published January, 2013

CCC is a member of the Campaign for Children, a partnership of the Emergency Coalition to Save Child Care and the NYC Youth Alliance, which is advocating to ensure New York City children have access to high quality early childhood education and after-school programs.

The Campaign for Children administered a survey of child care and after-school providers to better understand the impact instability was having on their programs.  The providers were clear that the inadequate reimbursement rate and the uncertainty caused by not knowing whether they would have city funding from one year to the next was leaving them unable to plan for the future, causing staff to look for more stable employment, making parents anxious about where they could safely leave their children while they were at work—and most importantly potentially leaving children without access to child care and after-school programs.

The economic and social benefits of investing in high quality early childhood education and after-school programs, particularly for low-income children, are well known.  The report includes the support for this notion by many city and state government officials.  As a result, the Campaign is urging City leaders to take immediate action to stabilize these two systems.