Investing in Ohio’s Future: Restoring Support for Young Children and Working Families

By Brittany Boulton, Vice President

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Note: the following testimony about Amended Substitute House Bill 96 was written and delivered by Brittany Boulton before the Ohio Senate Finance Committee on May 27, 2025.

Chair Cirino, Vice Chair Chavez, Ranking Member Hicks-Hudson, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I’m Brittany Boulton and I am the Vice President of Groundwork Ohio. We are the state’s leading early learning and maternal and young child health advocates, focused on the healthy development of children from prenatal to age five, and their families. We work with policymakers, business and community leaders, early childhood professionals, and families to advance policies that support the healthy development of young children to build a more prosperous future for Ohio.

Ohio Families and the State’s Future

Amended Substitute House Bill 96 as first proposed by Governor DeWine included a strong budget to support Ohio’s youngest learners. Groundwork Ohio strongly urges the Ohio Senate to consider restoring a number of these provisions that would:

1. Make work pay for working families

2. Improve health outcomes for moms and babies

3. Support quality early learning experiences

1. Make Work Pay for Working Families

Child care is a top concern for families and employers across Ohio. Just last month, the Ohio Chamber’s Untapped Potential in Ohio report highlighted that the state loses $5.48 billion in economic activity and $1.52 billion is lost in tax revenue each year as a result of child care issues.

Recent polling further reveals that access to affordable quality child care would prompt more than 6-in-10 non-working Ohio moms with children under age 6 to return to work. This underscores just how urgent and costly the issue has become. The average cost for full-day infant care in 2024 in Ohio was $13,780.

1 in 5 Ohio children ages 0-5 live in poverty (under 100% FPL) and 1 in 10 live in extreme poverty (at or below 50% FPL). More than one third (34%) of parents with children under five report serious problems paying rent or their mortgage, and nearly half (47%) are struggling to pay their credit card bills. Inflation is forcing 82% of parents with young children to cut back on groceries, impacting their ability to provide healthy, nutritious meals for their kids.

Ohio voters overwhelmingly support a Child Tax Credit. According to a December 2024 poll conducted by Public Opinion Solutions across over 800 Ohio voters, 84% support creating a Child Tax Credit. Results included 83% of Republicans, 78% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats supporting the policy.

The current budget proposal does not expand eligibility to child care beyond 145% FPL, keeping Ohio at the bottom of eligibility across the country. The bill also currently restricts the Child Care Choice Voucher Program to $100 million per year, representing a cut of $25 million over the biennium from the Governor’s proposal.

Groundwork Ohio respectfully requests the Ohio Senate restore the following provisions in Amended Substitute HB 96:

• REQUEST: Restore publicly funded child care eligibility to 160% of the Federal Poverty Level.

• REQUEST: Restore the Child Care Choice Voucher program to $75M in FY26 and $150M in FY27.

• REQUEST: Restore the refundable Child Tax Credit of up to $1,000 per child under age 7.

2. Improve Health Outcomes for Moms and Babies

Ohio continues to rank among the bottom 10 states for infant mortality and 11% of Ohio infants are born preterm. Maternal mortality increased by 17% between 2011 and 2021 even though research suggests more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. The severe maternal morbidity rate is 84.9 per 10,000 delivery hospitalizations.

Department of Children and Youth Director Kara Wente shared earlier this month in Senate Health Committee that infant mortality numbers are trending in the right direction; 2024 data shows 6.6 per 1,000 live births, the lowest in two decades. That means 70 more babies made it to their first birthdays than the year before — enough to fill four kindergarten classrooms.

Investments in critically-needed, evidence-based maternal and infant health programming are clearly working. Now is not the time to make cuts when we are finally seeing more Ohio babies reach their first birthdays.

Families who participate in home visiting programs as funded through the Help Me Grow line item are 60% less likely to experience an infant death. Under the recently-launched Family Connects program, being piloted in 11 counties but scalable to all 88 counties under As Introduced funding levels, families are experiencing a 50% reduction in emergency room visits during a new baby’s first year of life.

In addition to home visiting programming, community-led infant vitality programs that center the voices of moms and birth workers at a local level are seeing return on investment, as is evidenced in Hamilton County. Cradle Cincinnati has seen a reduction of local infant mortality levels by 30% in 20 months, and yet funding for the line item supporting the scaling of such programs was reduced in the Ohio House version of Amended Substitute HB 96. This line item also includes support for fathers and faith-based programming.

• REQUEST: Restore the As Introduced funding levels for Help Me Grow and Infant Vitality line items.

• REQUEST: Remove the House provision repealing existing law directing Ohio Department of Medicaid to provide continuous eligibility for children from birth to age 3.

• REQUEST: Remove the Ohio House amendment to Amended Substitute HB 96 that would restrict doula Medicaid reimbursement to six counties.

3. Support Quality Early Learning Experiences

Only 35.4% of Ohio kindergartners are entering the classroom ready to learn. The Ohio House eliminated the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) in their version of Amended Substitute HB 96. Nearly 4 out of 5 low-income children are not demonstrating kindergarten readiness, an early predictive measure of their later performance in literacy and math proficiency, high school graduation and post-secondary attainment. 44% of Ohio’s kindergartners are not on track for literacy.

The KRA is the only measure Ohio has available to understand the impact of experiences children are having in the first five years of life and where they begin their academic journey. Removing this measure will realize minimal cost savings, and damage our state’s ability to measure the return on meaningful early childhood investments detailed above.

• REQUEST: Restore the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment eliminated in the House version of Amended Substitute HB 96.

Conclusion

Groundwork Ohio partners with a vast network of caregivers, advocates, health and early childhood professionals, and families around the state whose day-to-day work impacts the life of children from birth to age five. We have traveled to urban and rural communities alike to conduct deep listening sessions and learn about the concerns of those who are closest to this work. Our requests as detailed in this document are a direct result of that engagement, as well as of our team’s analysis of existing data on state program outcomes and analysis of the national policy landscape for young children.

Thank you for your attention to these issues. We understand that you are making tough decisions, and we look forward to further conversations with you. I would be happy to answer any questions.

Groundwork Ohio Amendment Request Summary

• SC0460: Restore As Introduced language expanding Publicly Funded Child Care Eligibility to 160% FPL for initial eligibility

• SC0459: Restore additional $25M in FY 27 from As Introduced in Child Care Choice

• SC0458: Restore As Introduced investments in Help Me Grow and Infant Vitality

• SC0572: Restore As introduced version of child tax credit

• SC0459: Restore additional $25M in FY 27 from As Introduced in Child Care Choice

• SC0456: Restore the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, removed in the House

• SC0457: Remove the House’s repeal of existing law that would require Ohio Department of Medicaid to seek approval for continuous coverage of Medicaid enrollment for Medicaid-eligible children birth through age three

• SC0461: Remove restriction of Medicaid reimbursement for doulas to only 6 counties

Attachments

• Groundwork Ohio Child Care Sign-on Letter 

• Groundwork Ohio Poll Data (December 2024) 

• Untapped Potential 

• Groundwork Ohio 2025 Early Childhood Data Dashboard 

• USA Today: Ohio has a chance to make child care affordable for working families