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Tag: Oho Capital Journal

  • New report praises Ohio saving rescue plan funds, but warns of ‘precarious’ state of child care

    New report praises Ohio saving rescue plan funds, but warns of ‘precarious’ state of child care

    Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

    “The annual cost of care for two children in a center is 93% more than the average rent payment and 28% more than the average mortgage payment in Ohio,” the study stated.

    By:  – Oho Capital Journal

    A new analysis looking at child care in several states, including Ohio, shows big costs and staffing shortages, but also some proactive actions taken by states to prepare for the expiration of pandemic-era federal funding.

    The Century Foundation released a new report showing “a wave of increasing prices, economic damage, staffing shortages and reduced wages for early childhood educators,” and a “dire need for investment at the state and federal levels in child care to lower costs for working families,” according to a release announcing the report.

    “The annual cost of care for two children in a center is 93% more than the average rent payment and 28% more than the average mortgage payment in Ohio,” the study stated.

    Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice at the Century Foundation said the report showed what many parents are contending with every day: “finding and affording child care is taking a huge toll on families’ budgets and remains a big source of stress.”

    “At the same time, we’re seeing these are solvable problems: when elected leaders listen to parents and invest in care, it makes a difference,” Kashen said in a statement.

    The states chosen in the study were Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, due to the “outsized political attention right now in light of the 2024 election,” the study stated.

    Taking all of the states together, the Century Foundation study showed 30 to 40% of child care programs in the five states would have been forced to close without the ARPA “stabilization grants” distributed to the child care sector.

    “These challenges existed long before anyone had heard of COVID-19, but were exacerbated by the pandemic and made better by the ARPA funds,” the study stated.

    The end of pandemic-era funding began in September of 2023, with the Century Foundation estimated that more than three million children nationally would lose access to child care. Ohio was reported to have 6,265 child care programs which received ARPA grants, with 33% that would have closed without them, according to the most recent study by the Century Foundation.

    The foundation previously projected more than 130,000 Ohio children would lose child care, and more than 2,000 child care programs expected to close because of the so-called “child care cliff.”

    While the study of ARPA funding usages in Ohio showed the state having only spent 2/3 of its supplemental Child Care Development Block Grant from the ARPA monies “left room for longer term investments,” the state’s child care sector is still “in a precarious state.”

    Between 2019 and 2023, Ohio’s child care employment levels fell by 26%, 11% of the state’s programs were lost in that period and 10% of the licensed programs have disappeared since 2019.

    Citing state data, the study found “worsening” supply shortages. The data showed that in 2024, Ohio had 30%, or 2,700, fewer providers compared to 2018 levels.

    Alongside the decreases came a 25% increase in the price of child care since 2019, with the average annual price for an infant listed as $12,351 in the foundation’s most recent study.

    Child care has been a hot topic in Ohio, with advocacy groups and families throughout the state sounding the alarm of the state of child care, including its inaccessibility and high costs. The child care sector’s issues could have longterm impacts on the entire state economy, amounting to billions in impacts, according to policy advisors and advocates brought together by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

    Before they left for a summer break that will continue until after the November general election, the Ohio General Assembly saw the introduction of several bills aimed at addressing the child care system in the state, thought it’s unclear whether those bills will see passage before the end of the current GA in December. If they aren’t passed through by the end of the year, all bills would have to be reintroduced in 2025.

    Susan Tebben
    Susan Tebben

    Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • Ohio clinics sue to bar new abortion bill

    Ohio clinics sue to bar new abortion bill

    Protesters of a bill to promote a total abortion ban with the overturning of Roe v. Wade demonstrate outside the Ohio Statehouse in September. Photo by Susan Tebben

    BY: SUSAN TEBBEN – Oho Capital Journal

    A lawsuit has been filed against the newest state abortion restriction and its regulation of doctors’ ability to practice medicine.

    The ACLU, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region and Women’s Med Dayton are asking a Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to keep the state from enforcing a law to create “onerous and unwarranted” restrictions to health care in Southwest Ohio in particular.

    The Ohio General Assembly passed Senate Bill 157 in December, and the law is set to be effective March 23, if the court doesn’t fulfill the lawsuit’s request.

    If the law goes into effect, doctors who work with state public universities or medical centers will not be allowed to also be affiliated with abortion clinics in the state.

    Abortion clinics that conduct surgical abortions are considered “ambulatory surgical facilities,” also the name of other outpatient facilities where procedures can be done.

    Clinics who conduct abortions are required to have a “written transfer agreement” with a local hospital to which a patient can be transferred should medical care “beyond the care that can be provided at the ambulatory surgical facility” is needed.

    Those hospitals need to be within 30 miles of the facility.

    To obtain a variance to the written transfer agreements, doctors are required to have hospital admitting privileges within those 30 miles. But these variance agreements could be made more complicated by this new law, originally pushed by bill sponsors as a way for the Ohio Department of Health to track so-called “failed abortions,” which the state already defines as abortion procedures in which the child is alive when removed from the pregnant person’s body.

    So-called “failed abortions” are rare, and state data shows none of the abortions conducted after 19 weeks – still not considered a gestation period when a baby would survive outside of the womb – were on viable pregnancies.

    In the new lawsuit, doctors argue not only would the law create constitutional conflicts by singling out abortion providers, but it would also keep physicians from being able to “operate their businesses and pursue their professions,” including caring for their patients.

    “Because of SB 157, many patients seeking procedural abortions will be significantly delayed in accessing this vital, time-sensitive and constitutionally-protected health care until later in pregnancy, when the procedure not only carries greater health risks, but is also more expensive,” the lawsuit states.

    The Ohio Department of Health already requires abortion clinics to have at least four backup physicians to obtain the medical variance agreement, something that’s been in place since 2015.

    That, alone, is a problem when there aren’t enough doctors to allow for four backup doctors.

    “The hostile climate in Southwest Ohio makes it extremely difficult to find even one backup doctor to support a variance,” the lawsuit states. “There has been a national campaign to harass and shame the Dayton doctors who provide backup services to patients of WMD.”

    If variances are lost, licenses to practice as an ambulatory surgical facility are lost. That would mean a lose of health care services in Southwest Ohio, meaning the patients would be the ones suffering.

    “If plaintiffs’ ASF licenses are revoked, people needing procedural abortions would be forced to travel hundreds of miles round-trip to the next closest procedural abortion providers, and, due to a statutory waiting period, make that trip twice, or stay overnight, in order to access procedural abortion,” the clinics wrote in the lawsuit.

    The fact that the lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Alison Hatheway could mean good things for abortion clinics. Hatheway has been the judge on two other lawsuits fighting against state abortion restrictions, and in both cases Hatheway has ruled in favor of temporary stops to state legislation clinics said hampered their right to provide care.

    Most recently, Hatheway stopped a fetal tissue disposal law for a second time, saying clinics are “substantially likely to succeed” in their suit against an Ohio law that would require clinics to pay for burial or cremation of fetal tissue resulting from an abortion.

    In April of last year, the judge blocked a law restricting telemedicine abortions in the state.