Adriane Burnett, a single mother of two children, has had to forfeit her car. She’s behind on homeowner association payments. And she’s filing for bankruptcy.

The main reason her finances are upside down? Burnett, who lives in Birmingham, says she can’t find affordable child care for her younger son, who is four. But she also can’t afford to drop shifts at her various jobs to take care of him.

It’s a common dilemma for parents. Even those with higher incomes often are caught off guard and forced to make hard decisions if job demands or availability of care change.

“Before I knew it, I was just trying to survive,” Burnett said.

In 2022, almost 85,000 Alabama families needed access to child care but had no affordable, quality options in their communities, according to the Business Council of Alabama. A lack of child care contributes to Alabama’s low labor force participation rate, experts say, and some legislators and advocates are working on possible solutions.

The Alabama House has approved a bill to extend tax credits to employers and child care providers in an effort to make child care more affordable; the $20 million package is now in consideration by the Senate.

“This tax credit package is a first step, a good first step in the right direction,” said Kim Cochran, with the Women’s Foundation of Alabama.

“[Child care] is a basic need to get women into work, to get them into the workforce, so they can purchase a car, and purchase a house, and put food on the table for their children and get them to after school activities. This is something that should be a priority,” Cochran said.

Parents say they need solutions now.

Raneshya Norman, a single mother of three children, said she has to stretch dollars between paydays in order to afford both necessities and child care.

“I think that’s what we have a problem with as single moms, trying to find affordable child care today is definitely difficult. It definitely is because just about every slot is already taken. So we have to go without working and go without going to school. Being a single mom, you have to just find whatever you can get,” Norman said.

That’s if you can find care at all. Alabama has the most child care deserts in the southeast, according to the Center for American Progress.

As many as 19% of working parents in Alabama said they had had to miss work due to child care issues, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found in 2021. Others have to make even bigger decisions: Whether to quit jobs or change careers.

Kira Bloxom, mother of two children, ages one and three, quit her full-time hospital job when her first child was born. She now works on a flexible schedule as a PRN, but it’s hard for her and her husband to afford the day care that her three-year-old, who has autism, goes to.

Bloxom said she developed anxiety balancing child care needs and work.

“If I had gone into any other career, I probably would be unemployed,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done. The other option, the last resort, would be to take them completely out of daycare and keep them at home, but I wanted them to have that social interaction.”

What is Alabama doing to support child care?

HB358, sponsored by House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, would offer employer tax credits, child care facility tax credits and nonprofit child care provider grant programs, in a bid to incentivize employers to fund child care for their employees and to enable providers to offer more readily available, affordable, high-quality child care.

The bill is supported by organizations such as the Women’s Foundation of Alabama.

“Child care fundamentally supports women in the workplace, especially just getting them in and allowing them to remain in the workforce. We have heard from a lot of women around the state that this is an issue that they struggle with. They struggle with finding child care and affording child care,” Cochran said.

Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, who chairs the education budget committee in the House, told AL.com committees that have looked at the low workforce participation rate consistently found that the need for affordable child care is a key impediment for some people trying to enter the workforce.

The package also tries to shore up providers, who say it is harder and harder to provide care while still paying employees. The tax credit would also incentivize providers to improve their quality rating; centers with higher STARS ratings could get more funding.

The amount of money available for tax credits would also rise over time. In 2025, total employer tax credit is capped at $15 million. It would rise to $17.5 million in 2026 and $20 million in 2027.

Expanding child care options

Once a parent finds child care, it can be hard to give up that spot in search of something closer, cheaper or better.

Burnett, in Birmingham, works seven days a week at her customer service job and as a food delivery driver. That work keeps her son in daycare, but it’s exhausting.

In February, Burnett turned down a $2-an-hour promotion because the new position would require her to work longer hours.

“I had a full blown panic attack at work because I’m just so tired,” Burnett said. “It is a lot and it is taking a toll on me. I feel selfish because I want to be with my kids. My kids need me, but I also have to work.”

A new program hopes to tackle one piece of the crisis: The lack of child care centers and open seats in many communities.

West AlabamaWorks! in Tuscaloosa is partnering with Paths for Success, Shelton State Community College and the Alabama Department of Human Resources to create the Community Child Care Cultivator program, also known as 3by3.

“You’re creating entrepreneurship and small businesses but at the same time you’re solving a workforce issue and family issues with more child care seats,” said Donny Jones, with West Alabama Works!

Participants who complete the program will have the city and state licensing required to start an in home child care service. The 3by3 team will also help to prepare the households to meet the state’s requirement for child care.

Similar options might help families like Rachel Besson’s, who live in Gadsden. Her children are one, five and 17.

“Child care is actually part of the reason why we moved down here,” Besson said. “We were living [in Virginia] when I actually gave birth to our 5-year-old. And, you know, I was kind of ignorant about child care. I thought I could just put them in daycare, but it cost between $1,500 to $2,000 a month for one child. That’s like a mortgage payment.”

As soon as she got pregnant with her youngest child, Besson put her child on three different waitlists.

“I joined a waitlist at a local daycare because a lot of the other moms that I talked to were telling me about how many issues they were having finding reliable, trustworthy child care,” Besson said. “I didn’t really have any family that could watch her at the time, so I got on a waitlist and never got a call…Almost two years later, they’re still booked.”

She finally found a child care facility that costs $350 a month, but there are still days where Besson’s kids are at home.

Besson works from home in part to take care of her children as needed. While the setup is flexible, she believes it has impacted both her career and her ability to take care of her children.

“I could go somewhere and make more money working in an office. I would love to have daily interactions with adults and coworkers, to have a sense of community in an office, make more compensation, more upward mobility…If I did have reliable, affordable, trustworthy child care, I could go and be able to make things better for my family and not just get by. We could flourish,” Besson said.

Why does child care cost so much?

In Jefferson County, Alabama infant and toddler child care cost an average of $10,662 per year in 2023. Jefferson County women’s median income was $27,952, with a median family income of $67,455.

Raneshya Norman, a single mother of three children, ages two, six and twelve, said she has had to put her career aspirations on hold to afford child care.

Norman is an EKG technician, a career she says she enjoys. However, she recently had to stop because she could not balance the 12 hour shifts with her family.

“It’s extremely difficult to have a good job, but not have no type of stable child care for your child when school is out, or when the holidays come around, or if you have to work overtime, or if your hours change, or if you get promoted into a higher position where you have to stay at work longer or you have to come to work earlier,” Norman said.

After scouring Birmingham, Norman found a facility that she trusted, but it costs $200 a week, more than she can really afford.

“Sometimes we’re pulling out our last $3 or $4 to get a couple rolls of tissue just just to make it to payday,” she said.

Norman said that if she did not have to worry about child care costs, she would pursue a career in entrepreneurship selling medical equipment and go back to school to become a doctor.

“But unfortunately, because I have to work so late and so often to make enough money for myself and my children, I can’t even start to put those plans into work,” Norman said.

Some child care centers have had to increase prices and decrease staff just to stay afloat.

“Even child care centers have workforce issues. Being able to pay people and keep them is a struggle for large child care centers,” Jones, with West Alabama Works!, said.

The Alabama Department of Human Resources currently is taking applications for a new round of child care bonuses, intended to support centers and help them keep staff.

Camille Bennett, founder and executive director of Project Say Something and three child care centers in North Alabama, said that while tax credits may be helpful to some larger child care facilities, she also advocates for direct assistance to mothers and parents.

“We care about those moms too in terms of lower socioeconomic standing. The moms that are working fast food jobs are struggling. All we’re asking is that the legislation starts at the bottom and works its way up. They’re getting far less pay and they have to make co-pays and they’re getting the child care subsidies. But we need more.”

In a public hearing in Montgomery, Bennett asked for state funding to go directly to increasing subsidies to pay child care teachers a living wage and eliminate parent co-pays.

“We build relationships with families. We know when families are having a hard time, having a financial crisis. It’s hard work and it’s work that deserves proper funding,” Bennett said.