SEIU Healthcare Files Suit Against Rauner For Defunding Child Care Training
By Neal
Rauner’s Once Again Pushing the Child Care Assistance Program Toward Crisis
CHICAGO (Aug. 4)–SEIU Healthcare Illinois, the union that represents nearly 20,000 child care providers, filed a lawsuit against the State of Illinois today for failure to make agreed upon payments into the union training center that provides trainings required by the state.
The union has been fighting the state’s attempts at backdoor cuts to the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) in the form of mandatory training requirements. The training requirements must be completed by all child care providers who care for children under CCAP by the federal deadline of September 30th – which could lead to thousands of providers and children being purged from CCAP. IDHS has not provided the support, resources, or time for providers to complete these mandatory trainings by the September 30 deadline.
SEIU Healthcare Illinois charges that the state has failed to make payments into the Child Care Training Fund in accordance with a settlement agreement from October 2016. This Child Care Training Fund enabled SEIU’s Member Education and Training Center to provide the mandatory training for hundreds of child care providers.
Child Care provider and SEIU member Maricarmen Macias said, “We could be providing hundreds more trainings if the state would make its payments. We aren’t complaining about the content of the trainings but the state is making it too hard to get trained. This is an insult.”