Child Care Funding Cuts Will Compound Crises for Generations to Come

Head Start normally isn’t considered a partisan issue. The early child care program, under the purview of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was launched six decades ago as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty.” It’s historically had support from both sides of the aisle in Congress; after all, few would publicly argue with the program’s central mission of improving children’s emotional well-being, physical health and access to crucial education. Since 1965, nearly 40 million children from low-income families have been supported by Head Start programs.

But these are not, of course, normal times. And Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s draconian far right blueprint guiding Donald Trump’s second administration, calls for eliminating the Head Start program altogether. These wheels already seem to be in motion; on March 27, HHS announced it would be restructuring the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which oversees Head Start. Mass layoffs of 10,000 employees across HHS began April 1, including personnel cuts that led to the immediate closure of at least five of Head Start’s 12 regional offices. The future of the program is now uncertain; a former senior ACF official said there does not seem to be a transition plan in place for how Head Start will be administered after the reorganization.

As Trump implements his far-reaching and haphazard disembowelment of the federal government, the cuts to early child care programs have gotten less public attention than some of his other actions. This is a mistake. Child and family advocates and policy experts are sounding the alarm — not only about the immediate impacts that these cuts will have on low-income children and families, but also about the grave long-term consequences. That’s because, in attacking child welfare programs, the cuts to ACF and Head Start are by their very nature attacks on our shared futures.

“Every cut you make now is directly affecting not just the person that got cut but everyone in their family kinetic chain, everyone in their community kinetic chain, everyone that their money is also tied to,” Tecoria Jones, a South Carolina-based parent advocate and board member at Be Strong Families, a nonprofit family support organization, told Truthout. Jones herself was heavily impacted by the state welfare system, growing up in foster care and congregate care, before becoming a single parent to six children. “We are really mucking up some human rights right now, and we are pretty much compelling the future to be less than it could be,” she said. “These cuts are maybe not forever, but the impact will be forever.”

Head Start programs run on a federal-to-local model in all 50 states, meaning the government funding is distributed through grants to a variety of nonprofits, schools, and other local organizations working across early childhood education and anti-poverty initiatives. In addition to educating young children and preparing them to enter the school system, Head Start programs provide nutritious meals to youth experiencing food insecurity; conduct crucial medical, vision and dental check-ups; connect children with mental health services; foster interpersonal skills; engage parents directly in their child’s wellbeing and education; and more. This multipronged approach to child welfare has been found to increase literacy rates, help keep children out of the criminal legal system and break the cycle of intergenerational poverty — contrary to the Heritage Foundation’s claims that Head Start hurts children.

“These programs are not just babysitting,” Joe Dorman, the chief executive officer of the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, told Truthout. “It’s not just dropping your kid off and having somebody watch and play with them for the rest of the day until you pick them up. They provide wonderful programming to make sure the kids are learning, that they develop into good human beings by learning to play together.”

Jones emphasized that the Head Start closures will have a profound ripple effect, because access to child care provides parents with the ability to maintain regular employment hours. If that’s taken away, that leads to instability — not only in families, but in entire communities. “When people lose child care and when people become stressed as parents,” Jones said, “then we’re asking for an increase of child abuse and neglect cases.”

Head Start has already faced a rocky road since Trump took office. In January, the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze impacted grants to Head Start programs, forcing them to draw from their reserves to stay functional. Now, in light of the latest round of layoffs, local news outlets are reporting on the chaos ensuing across the country as the five regional Head Start offices have been forced to shutter.

In Seattle, Washington, all six employees were notified of their sudden termination on April 1, and immediately locked out of their offices. The Seattle Head Start regional office leads grant oversight, funding distribution and monitoring for programs in Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Oregon. Meanwhile, Jennie Mauer, the executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the Chicago regional office had been shut down without any official word to Head Start providers.

“We have received calls throughout the day from panicked Head Start programs worried about impacts to approving their current grants, fiscal issues, and applications to make their programs more responsive to their local communities,” Mauer said.

Even before the Head Start cuts, support for early child care in the U.S. was far from adequate. While free universal preschool programs are widespread in parts of the United Kingdom and Europe, the U.S. lacks the same. In fact, the majority of U.S. residents, particularly in rural communities, live in child care deserts —neighborhoods with either no licensed child care providers or an insufficient number of slots for the children who need them.

The crisis worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dorman told Truthout, which forced many daycare facilities and Head Start programs in Oklahoma to close their doors. “They were receiving payment on attendance rather than enrollment, so when kids weren’t going, they weren’t getting reimbursed for the portion that’s covered by the government,” Dorman said. “They have not reopened.”

Trump’s gutting of Head Start does not evince a basic understanding of why these programs were there to begin with. And while he paid lip service to supporting the working class on the campaign trail, it is of course low-income and working-class people who are going to be most adversely impacted by these latest cuts.

“We can’t afford to cut the good programs and then expect to put them back. We saw that happen with the pandemic, and they have not come back yet,” Dorman said. “If things like this continue, then we’re going to be in a very desperate situation, not only in Oklahoma, but across the United States.”