A rally was held in Northridge on Monday morning to bring awareness to the “A Day Without Child Care” campaign.
The nationwide campaign, which is held the day after Mother’s Day, brought together working parents and child care providers to urge Governor Newsom to “expand access to quality, affordable child care for working families” and “ensure that family child care providers are paid for the true cost of providing care,” according to Child Care Provider United.
During the rally, Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman called it “nothing more than basic dignity.”
“We are one of the only rich countries in the entire world that expects families to carry this burden all on their own. The only ones, and to me that is shameful,” she said.
Dr. Alex Orchard, a member of a committee of interns and residents at SEIU, and a second-year internal medicine doctor, said she and her family's lives have been “massively disrupted by a lack of child care.”
“Having spent years studying, obtaining my medical degree, training to become a doctor, I cannot begin to describe how it feels to have everything upended due to a lack of childcare,” she said.
She added that due to the issues, she had to take a year's leave of absence from her residency, but the time off didn’t make things easier.
Want to get caught up on what's happening in SoCal every weekday afternoon? Click to follow The L.A. Local wherever you get podcasts.
“I’ve had to find another job seeing patients in their homes, which have slightly more flexible hours, in order to survive and provide for my children,” she said. “Simply finding someone to hire me was a struggle, but finding childcare was a greater struggle. The daycare spots I finally managed to find summed to a total of $3,000 per month between my two children. And yet, childcare workers aren’t still being paid a liveable wage.”
Gov. Newsom’s revised budget proposal included pausing the plan to expand state-funded child care to 146,000 children, instead capping the expansion at 119,000.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok