Challenges parents facing with childcare costs increasing

OHIO — The costs of childcare continue to increase across the state.

News Center 7′s Taylor Robertson broke down how much it costs for families to send their kids to daycare in Ohio on News Center 7′s Daybreak.

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The cost of sending a child to daycare is averaging around $10,000 a year for parents here in Ohio. That’s about $833 each month and that only accounts for one child.

For some families, that is about a quarter of their household income, according to a Care.com survey.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that childcare is considered affordable when it costs families no more than seven percent of their house income.

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The weekly average cost to have a nanny is about $766 and for daycare, it’s around $321, Care.com says.

Robertson reports that for a family care center, it’s about $30, and a babysitter averages about $192 a week.

Those prices are one of the reasons why Keyra Stump of Huber Heights told Taylor that she started her in-home daycare business in Huber Heights.

“I was paying $325 a week,” she told Robertson. “For me, he was two at the time, and I was working there so it was really hard to try to get anything else because really, I was just working for my child to be in daycare.”

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The waitlist for daycare centers is also rising.

43% of families spent four months or longer on a waitlist, according to Care.com.

It also says that finding and affording childcare has been a challenge for families for a while, but the childcare cliff made it worse.

The childcare cliff is a term used to describe the sudden end to pandemic funding that kept thousands of childcare programs afloat.

Megan Fisher, 24, is pregnant with twins. She told Robertson that she is grateful that she will get to stay at home with her twins most of the time.

“We would just have to depend on like family and stuff because I’m not willing to put my kids in daycare,” she said. “I’m not even willing to give them to anybody other than our parents”.

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Care.com has listed six ways to save money on childcare costs:

• Find the best childcare for your budget.
• Discuss childcare benefits with your employer.
• Set aside pre-tax dollars to pay for childcare.
• Make the most of childcare tax credits and tax breaks.
• Research childcare subsidies and programs.
• Advocate for societal shifts.

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