Tanna Clews
The NH Legislature and governor have the chance to assist main investments in Granite State girls’s well being and workforce participation this 12 months — that’s, in the event that they move a price range together with the MOMnibus Act and the Youngster Take care of Working Households Act.
Each two years, New Hampshire writes a brand new price range for the state. The price range represents our collective priorities and values. What, as Granite Staters, can we care about? What ought to we fund? Who ought to we prioritize? The NH Girls’s Basis prioritizes investments in girls and ladies.
This 12 months, the Girls’s Basis, together with dad and mom, childcare suppliers, healthcare suppliers and companies, are advocating for a New Hampshire price range that values caregivers and girls with youngsters by: giving girls enrolled in Medicaid entry to well being look after a 12 months postpartum and entry to doulas, lactation consultants and donor milk banks; increasing entry to the kid care scholarship program; and offering workforce helps to youngster care employees.
Girls make the economic system work, however we should put money into girls’s well being and within the youngster care infrastructure so girls can hold supporting their households and native economies.
When confronted with childcare points, moms with younger kids organize reductions of their work hours which are 4 to 5 occasions larger than the reductions organized by fathers. With out entry to dependable youngster care, girls go away the workforce.
If youngster care could be discovered, it’s usually unaffordable. In our newest analysis publication, The Standing of Girls in New Hampshire 2023, we discovered that the annual median price for an toddler in a Granite State childcare heart is $13,250, a price that will eat 11 p.c of the median revenue of a married couple, and a staggering 55 p.c of a single mom’s median revenue. Childcare suppliers can not increase wages for his or her staff with out passing that price on to households. The Youngster Take care of Working Households Act invests in our youngster care infrastructure to handle these points.
Presently, girls who’re enrolled in Medicaid below being pregnant eligibility lose protection after two months postpartum. Girls want entry to preventive, acute, psychological well being and substance use therapy lengthy after two months postpartum. The MOMnibus Act would lengthen protection to 12 months postpartum, decreasing maternal mortality and rising charges of therapy for issues like maternal melancholy. The invoice would additionally present entry to doula companies, lactation companies and donor milk banks.
The excellent news is that the Senate handed the MOMnibus Act and Youngster Take care of Working Households Act separate from the price range earlier this 12 months. The Girls’s Basis is grateful to the Senate for his or her assist. We’re on the end line now. If the Senate contains these investments within the price range, the Home agrees and the governor indicators the price range, New Hampshire could have a price range that. prioritizes mothers, girls and households greater than any price range in latest reminiscence.
It takes engaged stakeholders (together with vocal mothers, dads and childcare employees) and an actual bipartisan effort to make these investments potential. We’re grateful to the legislators who’ve had mother’s backs all session.
Let your native elected representatives and senator understand how you’re feeling a couple of price range that invests in girls and their youngsters. Now let’s get a mom-friendly price range handed!
Tanna Clews of Portsmouth is CEO of the NH Girls’s Basis.