Letter: Maine Legislature made progress on baby care

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For the reason that pandemic, the shortage of reasonably priced and accessible baby care has been a barrier for fogeys of younger youngsters to work full time. The enterprise neighborhood has been elevating a purple flag on this problem for the previous few years. We’re happy that the Maine Legislature lately took actions to begin addressing this disaster. None of this might have occurred with out bipartisan assist and robust management in Augusta pushing this ahead.

The newly handed state funds contains many key baby care provisions. Amongst these are: wage will increase for baby care academics, which is able to common $400 a month-to-month starting in October; extra lower-income working mother and father will now qualify for baby care; extra of our lowest-income youngsters will now qualify for Head Begin applications; baby care academics’ youngsters can qualify for a brand new baby care scholarship program; and Maine will undertake a sturdy research of the true value of kid care, so future policymakers could make higher and extra knowledgeable selections about how finest to repair the damaged baby care system.

Thanks to all the oldsters in Augusta chargeable for this important piece of laws. Listening and responding to the wants of employers and Maine’s important baby care sector is essential to rising Maine’s workforce participation and enhancing the upbringing of our youth.