The Department of Human Services partnered with Penn State Harrisburg to assess the pandemic’s impact on child care providers. The results of this study determined that these providers will need over $200 million from the state to offset the costs of the pandemic.
According to Secretary of the Department of Human Services Teresa Miller, over $100 million in CARES Act funding was given to child care providers to fight the impacts of the coronavirus.
Thanks to the research conducted by Penn State Harrisburg’s Institute of State and Regional Affairs, she says this will help finalize another round of funding for these providers.
“Penn state researchers spent the next few months analyzing the financials cost of COVID-19 crisis on child care providers and the level of investment needed to sustain industry,” said Miller.
Assistant Professor of Education at Penn State Philip Sirinides said their study was based on four financial areas of research for child care providers.
Those areas were the facility expenses during the shutdown, the liquidity needed to reopen, the additional cost to abide by health and safety guidelines and the financial strain operating with reduced enrollment.
“These four costs don’t represent 100% of the financial impact that most if not all providers experienced, these are the known costs that can be reliably calculated,” he said.
Sirinides said they discovered that 86% of child care providers statewide shutdown due to the pandemic.
He said nearly all providers did not charge tuition and had fewer children present.
Statewide, he said the financial expenses during the shutdown exceeded $56 million.
As far as the costs needed to abide by the health and safety guidelines, he said that would require an additional $89 million.
Sirinides said the combined cost to address these financial areas totaled to over $209.4 million statewide for child care providers.
“its recommended that Pennsylvania layer additional funding on top of that base funding in a third round in order to meet specific provider costs that are generated by this study,” Sirinides said.
