Try to imagine the people who nurtured your children when they were young: Your child’s favorite day care teacher; the beloved youth worker who mentored your teen after school; the Early Intervention specialist who empowered you to teach your toddler; or the therapist who saved your child’s life.

New York is losing this vital workforce, and families are suffering as a result. These professionals, who are also our neighbors and friends, are not being paid fair wages. Many are working paycheck to paycheck, burnt out or choosing to find other work, and leaving behind systems that have incredibly limited capacity to support families. When families cannot access services like child care, early intervention, and mental health care, children’s health and parental job security suffer, jeopardizing future successes as children fall behind.

The good news: CCC and our partner coalitions have data-backed solutions to make things right for families and the people who serve them, and we are actively working to push for lasting change. 

Behavioral Health Care Workforce

When kids are forced to wait months or even years for mental health and substance use disorder services they desperately need today, families are forced into impossible situations that create even more complex issues for children as they age.

Right now, 3 out of 4 children in New York who need outpatient behavioral health services are not receiving them. Chronically low reimbursement rates for services have led to massive staff turnover and widespread worker shortages, which in turn have caused prolonged, unacceptable waitlists. An additional 6,281 mental health and substance use disorder  providers are needed to address the current statewide shortage.

Throughout New York State, a multi-year, billion-dollar plan is required to address the unmet need. The first step is to budget the funds to attract and maintain 1,300 additional providers. If these reforms are enacted, New York’s outpatient mental health system could serve over 26,000 additional children in the first year.  

Take action with CCC and the Healthy Minds, Healthy Kids Campaign by writing to state leaders, urging them to pass a budget that that addresses the behavioral health workforce crisis.

Early Intervention Services Workforce

Currently, New York State ranks 50th, or LAST, in the nation for timely delivery of Early Intervention services.  Early Intervention (EI) provides critical evaluations and services to young children with developmental delays and disabilities, but years of underfunding and inadequate rates have led to provider shortages. These shortages have created significant service delays for young children, particularly those in low-income communities of color.

Over half of NY families whose children are evaluated and deemed eligible for EI services do not receive them within the legally required timelines, waiting longer than the legal 30-day deadline for services to start. This means that children are missing out on critical development support at an important stage of their learning; 85% of brain development occurs before children start school.  

In response to this, last year the New York State budget included funding for a 5% rate increase for EI providers, but the State has so far failed to deliver those funds to providers.

Take action with CCC and the Kids Can’t Wait Coalition by encouraging state leaders to invest in New York’s children early by including a 5% increase in Early Intervention (EI) rates and funding for a comprehensive review of the Early Intervention program and funding models.

Child Care Workforce

The city’s essential child care system has been declining for years while increasing in cost, leaving families in major a bind. 

The number of child care providers has been dropping since before 2020, but the decline accelerated in 2020 and 2021. Sixty percent (60%) of the state’s census tracts were child care deserts in 2023, with seats for only 1 in 3 children. In NYC, CCC’s own research has revealed that 80% of families unable to afford child care, further illustrating the widespread unaffordability.

The average wage for a child care worker in New York as of May 2023 is a meager $37,970 annually or $18.26/hour. A recent survey by Empire State Campaign for Child Care (ESCCC), a CCC Coalition, reveals that more than 16,000 children across the state cannot receive child care due to understaffing, with 2,216 unfilled child care positions across surveyed programs. More than 56% of child care centers are currently experiencing a staffing shortage – defined as one or more staff roles that are currently unfilled. As a result, over 250 classrooms in these programs are dark, serving no children at all.

Low pay, demanding work requirements and a lack of health benefits and paid time off are a significant hurdle to attracting and retaining child care staff. Across New York, 94% of providers are women and 58% are women of color. Furthermore, most child care workers in New York earn less than the median wage; 1 in 4 in NYC live in poverty and more than half qualify for child care subsidies for their own children.

Take action with CCC and the Empire State Campaign for Child Care by telling New York leaders to fund child care in this year’s budget.

New York’s Future 

State Leaders should prioritize the workforces serving our families if we want to achieve the best results for children and young people. Community well-being largely depends on whether families can access the services their children need in a timely manner. And, as we fight to reduce child and family poverty statewide, we cannot forget about the connection between these services and poverty reduction, both for families who need the services and the families who provide them. We need to take care of the people who are taking care of our kids and laying the groundwork for the future success of our city and state’s children.