Durbin Meets With Child Care Advocacy Groups

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) today met with child care advocacy groups to discuss a path forward for legislation supporting children, working families, and child care providers. During their meeting, Durbin spoke about his support for child care tax incentives to improve child care accessibility and support working families in covering the costs, as well as his support to provide increased wages for child care workers.

Durbin has repeatedly pushed for increased funding for child care programs, including financial support for Head Start and Child Care and Development Block Grants. He is also a cosponsor of the Child Care for Working Families Act, which would help make child care more affordable and provide pay parity with elementary school teachers for similarly credentialed child care educators. While the average annual cost of child care in Illinois is $14,184 for infants and $12,192 for toddlers, child care workers in Illinois only receive an average hourly wage of $14.86 per hour.

“High-quality, affordable, and reliable child care is a necessity for Illinois’ working families. But with the rising cost of child care, it has become an out-of-reach luxury,” said Durbin. “Today, I met with child care advocates to discuss solutions to inaccessible and unaffordable child care while also ensuring that caregivers are earning the wages they deserve.”

Durbin also spoke about addressing the dental and health care needs of children. This month, Durbin introduced the bipartisan Promoting Dental Health Act, which would reauthorize funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Oral Health program for the next five years, supporting outreach, prevention, and data collection efforts to improve dental care in Illinois and across the country To bolster the health and dental care workforce, Durbin has led funding efforts for the National Health Service Corps, which provides scholarship and loan repayment to dentists and health care professionals who commit to serving patients in urban and rural areas with a shortage of providers.

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