Biden-Harris administration expands child care benefits in North Carolina

Vice President Kamala Harris announced lowered child care costs for working families in North Carolina, building on prior federal funding for child care programs and promising more.

Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris announced more federal funding for child care in North Carolina through the Child Care & Development Block Grant (CCDBG). 

Now, she’s promising even more. 

Her newly announced economic policy agenda pledges even more support for families in the near future, if she’s elected president.

To support working families, Harris is proposing expanding economic relief to millions of families, and parents with new children by expanding the Child Tax Credit, in part, to help families afford the rising cost of child care. 

“We will provide $6,000 in tax relief to families during the first year of a child’s life,” Harris said to applause from a crowd in Raleigh last week.

After the first year of their child’s life, families would get $3,600 annually until their child reaches age 6, at which point they would get $3,000 per year until their child turned 18.

These issues are personal for Harris.

“My mother was a breast cancer researcher, and she would work long days and often on weekends. And when she did, my sister and I would walk two doors down to the home of Mrs. Regina Shelton,” Harris said in a speech last year. “Ms. Shelton ran a childcare center, and she became a second mother to my sister and me. My mother often said that but for Mrs. Shelton she would never have been able to do the work that she did. Those are the stakes of this work: bringing childcare to all families who need it.”

Harris has a long track record of supporting issues and funding impacting women and children. In her career as District Attorney of San Francisco, as Attorney General of California, and as a US Senator, Harris focused on crimes against women and children; established the Bureau of Children’s Justice in California; and sponsored a bill that sought to align school and work hours, expand after-school and summer programs, and guarantee paid leave for parents and caregivers. 

Childcare funding for North Carolinian families

The CCDBG can directly reduce the financial burden of child care for low-income working families. Specifically, this program helps by:

• Capping child care copays for participating families at 7% of income;
• Encouraging states to eliminate copays for families of children with disabilities, experiencing homelessness, in foster care, in Head Start, and for families below 150% of the federal poverty level;
• Stabilizing and improving child care programs by directing states to pay child care providers fairly and on time;
• Making it easier for families to access CCDBG subsidies through online enrollment and presumptive eligibility.

Thousands of children under 6 are already served by the CCDBG in North Carolina, and even more families will benefit from this funding.

Federal funding for child care centers

In 2021, the Biden-Harris administration passed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) that provided vital funding to communities and families suffering from COVID-19. Governor Roy Cooper announced $805 million of ARPA funds would go towards Child Care Stabilization Grants in North Carolina, which helped child care programs with personnel costs and facility maintenance.

Carolyn Slade, the director of  St. Stephens Loving Daycare Center in Rocky Mount, explained this summer that “We’ve been able to stay open, thank God, and not close like some facilities that had to close their doors – but we’ve been able to stay open because of the [ARPA] funding.

”Learn more about the Child Care Stabilization Grants in North Carolina here.