King County, Seattle to give $7M in payments to child care workers

Jun. 13—King County and the city of Seattle will grant $7 million in one-time payments to child care workers, citing low wages and high COVID-19 risk.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and King County Executive Dow Constantine announced a batch of jointly funded one-time payments for child care workers Monday morning, allocating $5 million from the county's Best Start for Kids levy and $2.4 million from the city's JumpStart tax to aid child care workers who make an average of about $9 an hour less than the state median.

"The pandemic reminded us all that child care providers are nothing short of heroic," Constantine said at a news conference outside the Community Day Center for Children in the Central District.

"These dedicated professionals continued to show up day after day, knowing the risks, to bring normalcy and routine and, critically, social interaction to the lives of our youngest residents," he said.

The payments are a necessary incentive as the toll of the pandemic and rising cost of living in Seattle and King County are pushing child care workers out of the industry, according to Susan Brown, president and CEO of Kids Co.

"We've built a nonprofit child care organization that, pre-pandemic, was literally serving 900-1,400 kids annually," Brown said. "But today we're barely serving a fraction of that as a consequence of one very important thing: the challenge of finding people to do this work."

Brown said that while the one-time payments will help workers, it's not enough to mend industry working conditions.

"It's hard, hard work for low pay, and we really need much greater investment from business and government to make the child care sector really thrive and work," Brown said.

The amount of individual payments will depend on the number of qualified applicants. Constantine said he anticipates about 9,000 applications.

Full-time and part-time child care staff working at child care programs licensed through the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families in King County can apply. Applications should be filled out by the employer or licensee by June 27.

The grants will be distributed by the child care program to all eligible staff via the program's payroll system, after applications are processed.

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