Budget Summary: What This Means for Ohio’s Youngest Children

Summary of H.B. 96, State Operating Budget FY26-7

July 1, 2025

The final state budget reflects both progress and setbacks for Ohio’s youngest children and their families. While several new investments help preserve core supports for early learning and maternal and child health, the budget ultimately falls short — failing to meet the urgency of the moment and missing critical opportunities to provide relief for families. These shortcomings risk undermining the very systems young children depend on. Below is a summary of the gains, losses, and the overall impact of this budget on Ohio’s youngest citizens.

Progress for Ohio’s Young Children

Despite setbacks, the budget includes some positive, new state investments over the biennium:

• Allocates $200 million of federal funds to the Child Care Choice Voucher program allowing the state to serve 20,000 more children, or 12,500 more working families.

• Changes Publicly Funded Child Care payments from being paid on an attendance-based payment structure to an enrollment-based payment structure, that will improve payment stability for providers.

• Invests $10 million for the Child Care Cred pilot, a cost-sharing model among employers, employees, and the state.

• Invests $2.85 million to the Child Care Provider Recruitment program to increase child care in underserved areas in the state.

• Invests $6,203,050 in increased funding to expand early literacy access through curricula and activities aligned with the science of reading.

• Increases funding for Dolly Parton Imagination Library by $500,000 over the biennium.

• Increases Early Intervention funding by $15,196,000, improving evaluation and service coordination.

• Invests $3.8 million in infant vitality efforts which will now total $36 million over the biennium. This includes a new $5 million allocation for community and faith-based infant vitality programming, enabling some state funds to support and expand locally driven solutions to combat infant mortality (ex. Cradle Cincinnati model).

• Increases funding for Help Me Grow, evidence-based home visiting by $21.5 million which will support 12,000 more children.

• Increases investment for Ohio’s Fatherhood Commission by $20 million, enabling expansion of programs and services to support more communities across Ohio.

• Increases $20M to implement Child Wellness Campuses that provide short-term. treatment and support for children in crisis who are awaiting foster care placement.

• Protects current law requiring Medicaid to reduce the administrative for parents of children under four to stay enrolled in Medicaid through a federal waiver secured during the last state budget. (HB 33, 135th Ohio General Assembly).

• Earmarks up to $1 million over the biennium to support stable housing for pregnant mothers and improve maternal and infant health outcomes.

• Invests $5 million in pediatric cancer research.

Setbacks for Ohio’s Youngest Children

Despite areas of progress, the budget falls short in critical ways:

• Fails to enact a refundable Child Tax Credit, denying working families with children under 7 who need it the most a refundable credit up to $1,000 per child under age 7.

• Fails to expand publicly funded child care eligibility to 160% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) which would serve 11,000 additional children. Eligibility remains at 145% FPL (150% FPL for children with special needs), the lowest in the nation.

• Fails to appropriate an additional $200 million in federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds for child care, allocating less in TANF than previous years.

• Misses the opportunity to invest an additional $25 million in the Child Care Choice Voucher program reducing access for families who don’t qualify for Publicly Funded Child Care. 

• Eliminates $16.5 million for lead poisoning prevention, threatening child health and safety.

• Undermines statewide expansion of Family Connects home visiting model by not investing an addition $26 million over the biennium.

• Misses the opportunity to invest and addition $3.5 million in Dolly Parton Imagination Library, putting less books in the hands of young children.

• Misses the opportunity to invest $6 million to support children’s dental health.

The Bottom Line

+$106,049,050 new state investment in young children and families.

-$16,500,000 cut from existing state investment in young children and families.

= +$89,549,050

Groundwork Ohio celebrates an additional $89.5 million invested in young children and families. The budget delivered some hard-fought protections in a challenging fiscal and political environment—but it does not go far enough to meet the current and growing needs of Ohio’s youngest children. Additionally, Groundwork is still working to unravel some provisions impacting child care that were added very late in the budget process as we look towards the implementation of new investments and limitations included in the final budget.

Groundwork Ohio is hopeful that the final budget keeps Ohio moving with intention toward the goals set in our shared policy agenda and proposed by Governor DeWine to improve outcomes for young children and families. We appreciate the Governor’s continued advocacy, the leadership of legislative champions who prioritized protecting core early childhood investments, and, most especially, the families who bravely shared their stories to keep kids at the center of this debate.

The path forward is uncertain. Without new action, Ohio will face a $600 million shortfall in child care funding next biennium as one-time federal dollars dry up. At the same time, looming federal proposals to slash Medicaid threaten hard-won protection for moms and babies. We have serious work ahead to defend progress and push forward.