Advocate: Mississippi can ease child care crisis by freeing federal TANF funds

Cathy Grace, an early childhood specialist, wrote in a Mississippi Today guest essay that Mississippi could largely solve its child care crisis by freeing unused federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds for child care, a move she said would not require additional state funding and could address a waiting list of about 20,000 families.

Grace wrote that current income eligibility for child care assistance is set at 85% or below the state median income — $51,424 for a family of four — and that federal rules for TANF and the Child Care Development Block Grant require parents to work, attend school or serve as foster parents. She said those programs exist to support working families by offsetting child care costs.

Grace said the federal government provided roughly $200 million during the COVID-19 pandemic to Mississippi Department of Human Services child care programs, and those grants kept many centers open until the funds were spent. She cited a 2024 survey by the Mississippi Economic Council that found 77% of businesses reported child care as a problem and 44% said it was their biggest problem. Grace wrote that after pandemic-era funds ended, more child care programs closed in 2025 than in recent memory, forcing some parents from the workforce.

Grace wrote that the state Department of Human Services has not allocated all TANF funding it received and that millions remain unspent. She said state officials initially argued federal regulations prevented transfers, but later acknowledged the money can be used for child care through a direct spending transfer. Grace wrote that Senate Public Health Committee Chairman Hob Bryan asked department Executive Director Robert Anderson why the state did not use the TANF funds; she said Anderson told Bryan he would investigate and that help was not needed. Grace wrote the TANF account is “thought to be over $100 million,” though she said the current figure has not been released, and that about $60 million would cover eligible families and keep centers operating.

In her essay, Grace urged immediate approval of transfers by the department director and recommended a state law requiring annual transfers of unspent TANF funds to child care. She wrote that if 7% of parents now out of the workforce because of child care challenges returned to work, the state could gain about $1.2 billion a year. Grace is the early childhood specialist at the North Mississippi Education Consortium and has worked in the early childhood field for more than 50 years, including teaching at four state universities and serving as a consultant to state and nonprofit agencies, according to her bio in the essay.

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