For more than three decades, I have welcomed children into my home and provided a safe, supportive place for them while their parents work to provide for their families. I have worked with them to read their first words, created drawings and paintings together that decorate refrigerators in their homes, and gathered them around the table for nourishing snacks and meals.
As a licensed family childcare provider, I believe providing nutritious meals to children in our care is a crucial aspect of our work. It is not just about filling their bellies but about nourishing their bodies and minds with wholesome, healthy food. It is a labor of love that involves planning menus, shopping for groceries, and preparing meals from scratch with only fresh ingredients.
However, because the meals and snacks we prepare and serve are made in my home or a family care center,I am not reimbursed at the same rate as a child care center. What legislators fail to remember is that “a child fed is a meal served. Period.”
The current reimbursement model for family care providers is a 75 percent reimbursement rate for the funds we spend out of pocket to ensure the children we care for each day are receiving nourishing meals. This means we are not reimbursed by the state for one out of every four meals we serve.
In contrast, center-based providers are reimbursed for every meal and snack they serve at a 100 percent reimbursement rate. The inequitable reimbursement rate gap is the result of a racist legacy of childcare laws – still in place today – that undervalue and underpay labor historically performed by Black, Latina and immigrant women. Today women of color make up 71% of home care providers, and more than half over the age of 50, and few have retirement savings.
The majority of family childcare providers do this work because we know we are an important extension to working families and want to build and run our businesses. I started my business because I wanted to stay home after having my second child. But California has not valued this investment.
Today’s current policy of the state is that no child should be hungry while attending a preschool program and that all preschools provide for the nutritional needs of all children in attendance. For this goal to be realized, California needs to adequately invest in nourishing our kids in care and supporting all child care providers equally.
There is proposed legislation that will help make family child care providers whole. AB 679 (Wicks-D) eliminates the discriminatory reimbursement rate gap that underpays and undervalues family child care home providers serving healthy meals to kids in their care. In a time of increased food costs, inequitable family child care compensation, and increased food insecurity experienced by providers and the families they care for, AB 679 provides family child care providers with needed funds to pay for meals served to kids in their care.
Despite receiving a lower state rate of reimbursement than child care centers, we are still held to the same standards and must submit the same amount of paperwork. We wait months for the reimbursement we are owed.
With a smaller staff, I spend weekends driving to multiple stores to ensure I am getting the freshest produce at the best price. I go the extra mile because I care and these are my families. Yet, all of this time and investment to provide nourishing, healthy meals for the children in my care each day goes overlooked by the state. We can’t let this continue.
Support of AB 679 is essential to ensure family care providers can continue to provide the level of care the families they serve depend on, and frankly deserve, and demonstrates the value California places on the role family child care providers play in our communities.
Tonya Muhammad is a family child care provider based in Hawthorne.