United States

Excerpted from the American University's event page

The US Care Infrastructure: From Promise to Reality

March 4-5, 2022 | Remote & In-Person

President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda has set ambitious goals for the US care infrastructure. This important conference will convene academics, policy researchers, advocates, and policymakers to explore critical issues and policy proposals for the care industry, including paid family and medical leave, care for older adults and people with disabilities, child care issues, and racial/equity issues in the industry. We’ll discuss issues facing individual care workers as well as the broader economics of the care infrastructure in the United States post-COVID-19. The conference will serve as a space to collectively assess and push policy development and research on care in the United States, drawing on international experiences and examples.

Workshop IV: Building the Child Care Infrastructure: State-Level Challenges

This panel highlights the impact of (lack of access) to child care on gender and racial equity and brings together academic researchers and child care advocates to discuss the implications of existing policy proposals and programs (e.g. the Child Tax Credit, universal Pre-K, and capping child care costs) to support parents across states. This panel brings together child care advocates from conservative and liberal states to address challenges to implementing parent-friendly policies and strategies to overcome them.

• Impact of child care supports on lifetime earnings
• State by state impacts of expanded child care benefits
• State-level challenges to a quality child care for all agenda

Moderator: Georgia Poyatzis (Institute for Women’s Policy Research and American University)

Speakers: Robert Hartley (Columbia University), Alycia Hardy (Center for Law and Social Policy), Elliot Haspel (Robins Foundation), Shannon Jones (Groundwork Ohio)

Workshop VI: Expanding Child Care Beyond Usual Hours: Employers, Unions, and Government

This panel will ask what role employers and unions can play in expanding child care provisions, particularly beyond usual center care hours, and will examine the role of in-home child care in providing access to care, and efforts to ensure that care providers are properly funded and rewarded.

• The role of employers in providing care during non-standard hours (e.g. Military daycare)
• The role of unions in expanding child care supports (e.g. 1199SEIU Child care fund; Boston Building trades)
• In-home child care in federal and state policy
• International experiences with mandating workplace child care support from employers

Moderator: Ariane Hegewisch (Institute for Women’s Policy Research)

Speakers: Eiko Strader (George Washington University), Debra King (National Domestic Workers Alliance), Becky Levin (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), Liz Skidmore (North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters)
Commentators: Alexandra Patterson (Home Grown Childcare), Jaya Chatterjee (Common Cause)