The expiration of pandemic funding for child care providers is a crisis: Up to 70,000 child care programs could close, with 3.2 million kids losing care, leaving their parents scrambling. One of the major challenges for this critical industry—if kids don’t have care, their parents can’t work—is staffing. Pay is low and programs are competing with higher-paying employers like Target and Amazon. But Kentucky has found a way to make child care a more financially viable job: giving child care workers free child care.
