State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, has introduced legislation to help ease the shortage of child care options for military families.
Senate Bill 99 would exempt child care providers in California who already are licensed by the Department of Defense to also have a state license to begin working.
Geraldine Valentino-Smith, director of the Defense-State Liaison Office, said state child care license requirements are often duplicative of the federal license requirements and can take federally licensed providers between six and nine months to obtain.
“That’s almost an entire year of lost income,” said Courtney Baltiyskyy, vice president of public policy for YMCA San Diego. “That’s extremely stressful for a military household, or anybody’s household.”
Nearly 87% of child care providers for military families are military spouses, according to the DOD, who operate as independent business owners.
“There’s enthusiasm about getting any additional child care support into our region, especially if it’s high quality,” Baltiyskyy said.
Bases across the nation often have months-long wait lists for families seeking child care. California has the highest number of active duty military personnel in the country with nearly 160,000 in 2022.
More than 4,000 children were on the wait list for Navy child care centers in San Diego in 2022, and the waitlist for the state subsidy child care program in the county is nearly 7,000, according to Baltiyskyy. About three out of every 10 eligible children are served.
In 2021, the DOD reported they needed 1,433 family child care providers to meet the demands of military communities, but only had 727 available providers.
Frequent relocation forces military families to restart months-long child care searches. As a result, families can turn to more expensive and less convenient civilian options.
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