By Anne K. Ard and Heather Smoyer

Pennsylvania’s children and families are facing a crisis. Parents are unable to find reliable and high-quality child care due to a critical shortage of child care workers, Early Intervention providers and pre-K educators.

Most Pennsylvanians believe that the well-being of all children is important to the health of communities. Parents know that laying a strong foundation for children while they are infants and toddlers is critical to their long-term health and thriving.

Early intervention for children and families provides critical support and resources. Strong preschool makes it more likely that children will succeed. We know that high-quality child care improves math and language ability, reduces the likelihood of grade repetition and generally contributes to children’s healthy development.

However, finding reliable, high-quality child care and pre-K is incredibly difficult. Even those parents who can afford child care face long waitlists and the situation is much worse for low-income families.

As a former director of a child care facility, there were days Heather Smoyer wore many hats — cook, infant caretaker, PreK teacher — while managing the facility to keep open the classrooms.

Sometimes the facility had to close due to a lack of funding and staff. Consequently, parents were then unable to go to work causing a ripple effect through the community.

Seventy-two percent of low-income families with children under five who are eligible for subsidized child care are unserved. There are currently more than 3,000 unfilled child care positions in Pennsylvania. Filling these vacancies would provide access for 25,000 more children and their parents.

Research shows that high-quality child care also has a positive impact on parents’ earning potential, generates increased employment and tax revenues and increases job retention and productivity.

Last year, Gov. Josh Shapiro expanded the child and dependent tax credit. A clear next step is to find solutions to ease the burden on the workforce.

Many child care workers simply cannot afford to work in the field.

For the first time since 2007, the governor’s budget proposes a new line item for early education and includes increases to support early childhood education, and $55 million to provide retention and recruitment bonuses that will assist with finding and keeping qualified workers and teachers.

An additional $10 million has been proposed to increase Early Intervention provider rates, so that every child across the commonwealth will have access to the support and services they need to succeed.

On top of this funding, $15 million is proposed to raise wages for Pre-K Counts educators and stabilize the program’s workforce. These investments are long overdue.

If we care about our children, and if we want to create healthy families to build strong communities, then we must invest the resources to make that happen.

Anne K. Ard serves on the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Women. Heather Smoyer is the chair of the Centre County Childcare Crisis Coalition.