Boys & Girls Clubs across Maine serve and support nearly 8,000 children and youth and their families annually across 22 locations. Our talented staff work every day to wrap learning and personal growth into fun activities to engage children and youth to learn healthy habits, like physical fitness and avoiding drug use, enhance academics, and bolster character and leadership development. Boys & Girls Clubs serve school-aged youth and operate during critical afterschool and summertime periods, filing a vital gap when parents are working and youth may otherwise find themselves alone and unsupervised.

Boys & Girls Clubs offer a wide variety of services based on the communities they serve. The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Waterville, located at the Alfond Youth & Community Center, and the Boys & Girls Club of Kennebec Valley also provide child care.

Organizations like these are stepping up to help address Maine’s dire child care crisis. Our programs provide quality and reliable child care that enables parents to go to work or further their education without worrying if their children are safe and receiving the support and nurturing each child needs.

What we ask from policymakers and administrative partners is the needed assistance to do these jobs, with timeliness, consistency and predictability. Sadly, it’s not always what we have received.

Last year, the Legislature approved major child care provisions to address child care workforce challenges, including passing wage stipends and a scholarship fund for the children of child care workers. In addition, they also increased child care subsidy rates for lower-income working parents.

These are great steps forward but now the scholarships and increased subsidy rates are being delayed by the Department of Health and Human Services. These actions are causing uncertainty in an already fragile child care field.

In addition, child care providers participating in Maine’s Child Care Affordability Program should be paid subsidy rates that are based on program enrollment, rather than based on attendance, as they currently are. Reimbursement based on attendance does not take into account days students are sick or cannot attend programs. Providers must staff according to enrollment. The cost of running a child care program, including staffing, the mortgage/rent, and electricity and internet bills, does not change based on the number of students who attend. Senate President Troy Jackson has proposed fixing this problem in a bill he recently introduced and one I support, L.D. 2199.

This current inconsistency in payment makes hiring workers more challenging, as providers need to cover those costs not covered by the state because of a child’s absence. Due to this uncertainty, child care providers are less likely to open new child care spots and pass the costs on to working families.

The Boys & Girls Clubs in Maine also support another provision in Senate President Jackson’s bill to establish an emergency fund to support child care providers who find themselves in need of temporary assistance to keep from closing their programs. An emergency fund would provide critical assistance in times of unforeseen need, so that we can help keep children in child care, and thus, Maine parents in the workforce or furthering their education.

These are great first steps to help rebuild a vital and viable child care industry and deserve support from all policymakers in Augusta.

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