Gillibrand Announces More Than $2.7 Billion In Federal Funding For Child Care And Development Program In Omnibus Bill Signed By President

Press Release

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today announced that, after her push the Omnibus spending bill signed by the President last week includes $2.761 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program (CCDBG) for Fiscal Year 2016 (FY16). The funding Gillibrand pushed to include would provide assistance to low-income families across the United States to gain access to quality, affordable child care while parents work or attend school. The CCDBG program helps over 1.4 million children from nearly 900,000 low-income families across the United States.

The $2.761 billion secured by Gillibrand is an increase of $326M over FY15 levels. Gillibrand wrote to the Senate Appropriations Committee urging that without this additional federal funding to supplement state resources, states would have been faced with cutting the number of low-income children and families receiving reliable, affordable child care assistance through this program.

"I pushed to secure this funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program so that New York and states across the country have the resources necessary to implement child development programs without reducing the number of low-income children and families served by the program," said Senator Gillibrand. "The funding I pushed to secure in the omnibus will help over one millions children and thousands of families in New York and across the country."

Last year, Congress passed a reauthorization of the CCBDG program that strengthens health and safety standards for child care providers, requires mandatory background checks for all child care staff members, and implements new training requirements for child care providers. Without additional federal funding to supplement state resources, several states would have been faced with cutting the number of low-income children and families receiving reliable, affordable child care assistance through this program. Many states already have waiting lists for the CCDBG program as a result of funding shortfalls.

The CCDBG program is the primary federal funding source to promote families' economic self-sufficiency and foster healthy child development and school success by improving the overall quality of early learning and afterschool programs.

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