Tara Ryan, of Durham, founded the state’s first chapter of Chamber of Mothers hoping to increase support for families and children. Here, she talks during a meeting last spring. (File photo by Annmarie Timmins/New Hampshire Bulletin)
Tara Ryan was only seven weeks pregnant with her first child when she secured slots on four child care waitlists. Even then, her daughter didn’t get a full-time space until she was 1.
Now expecting a son through in vitro fertilization, Ryan said the first to know about her embryo transfer was the child care center, “so that we could secure a child care spot for him” — more than a year out from when they’ll need it. The price tag to have both children at the facility is over $50,000, though they’re sitting on waitlists at two less-expensive options.
“It’s unaffordable to us,” said Ryan, of Durham, a founder of the state chapter of Chamber of Mothers, a nonprofit, grassroots group focused on issues such as parental leave, maternal health, and child care. “Like, who can afford that for child care? I just, I don’t even know who can, but we’re gonna figure it out. We have to figure it out.”
Her story is emblematic of a child care system in New Hampshire and beyond that gobbles up household incomes while providing few options for families and low wages for workers as the average provider operates on razor-thin profit margins. Amid a busy budget session, New Hampshire lawmakers directed some attention to the topic, though early care and education issues made up only a small sprinkle of bills in a sea of more than 1,100 weighed in Concord this year.
While advocates and lawmakers involved in the issues came out of the session with some wins, they felt the state had a long way to go in making a dent in addressing affordability and access. Several said New Hampshire needed to bring in more revenue to make lasting, systemic changes to the child care issues plaguing the state.
The new budget will allow additional federal dollars to be routed to the child care scholarship program, a state-federal partnership that more families have become eligible for in the last year with an expanded income cap, should the funds be needed to prevent a waitlist.
The Legislature also greenlit a pilot program, coming in 2026, that aims to cut down on administrative burdens for the scholarship for families and providers. It would provide a presumptive eligibility period for families after an initial screening, allowing earlier access to scholarship funds while they complete the application process.
Lawmakers also hope to use $15 million in federal dollars over two fiscal years for a child care workforce grant program, but it remains unclear whether the federal government will allow the money to be used for that purpose.
In other action, a new law will include pending charges, instead of just convictions, in criminal record checks for child care workers and dissolves the child care licensing fund into the general fund. Sen. Howard Pearl, a Loudon Republican who sponsored the enacting Senate Bill 22, said the measure was requested by the state Department of Health and Human Services.
Also this session, the Legislature rejected a bill that would’ve provided property-tax relief and school building aid to some child care agencies.
In a statement through her office, Gov. Kelly Ayotte emphasized the action related to the scholarship program, and also highlighted $1 million that will go to the state’s community college system for creating pathways for child care workforce training. She said helping families access affordable child care was a “critical need and an important part of ensuring we remain the best in the nation for economic opportunity.”
“Looking ahead,” said Ayotte, a Republican, “we will ensure Granite Staters can continue to access child care scholarships, remove unnecessary barriers to entry for new providers, and partner with our community colleges, the private sector, and nonprofits like the Boys and Girls Club to expand child care options for our families and advance career opportunities in the child care workforce.”
Scholarship program
It costs the average family over $30,000 a year to put an infant and toddler in a child care center in New Hampshire, according to 2024 data from Child Care Aware of America.
In the last budget, lawmakers expanded eligibility for the state’s child care scholarship program to families making up to 85% of the state median income. Those in the program pay a cost-share for child care ranging from $0 to 7% of the family’s income. (For child care to be considered “affordable” by the federal government, it must take up no more than 7% of a family’s income.)
Some families who didn’t meet the income threshold last year may be newly eligible due to adjustments to the state median income this July. A family of four earning up to $124,595 and a family of three earning $104,660 may now be eligible for the scholarship, said Nicole Heller, senior policy analyst at the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research nonprofit.
In this state budget, lawmakers focused on cutting down paperwork burdens that may have dissuaded eligible families from accessing assistance and providers from participating in the program.
Trina Ingelfinger, the early care and education policy coordinator at New Futures, a health policy advocacy group, said her organization had heard “from both providers and families over the last year or so that overly burdensome paperwork requirements were making it difficult to access the program, and as a result, this was interfering with families’ path back to work, and we also understood that some child care providers were opting out of the program because of these issues.”
The budget establishes a two-year pilot program, starting in January 2026, that will give families who have undergone an initial screening access to the scholarship while they complete the application process. This period may be 60 days; until a final eligibility determination is made; or when a timeframe to submit necessary information and documents, determined by DHHS, has expired — whatever comes first.
Neither child care providers nor families will be on the hook for paying back scholarship funds should it ultimately be determined a child is ineligible for the program, “except in cases of fraud or intentional violation of program rules,” the law says.
The budget also aims to reduce burdens on providers by eliminating the requirement to report hourly attendance for scholarship recipients, “to the extent that such reporting is not necessary for administrating child care scholarship payments.”
The department will write a detailed report about the results of the pilot program for agency oversight committees in the Legislature by May 1, 2028.
The law also requires the department to, by December, implement a system that will allow providers to receive scholarship payments “in advance of or at the beginning of each payment period.”
The budget appropriates $100,000 to the department to implement these directives. It also allows the state to tap into additional Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reserve funds if they’re needed to prevent a waitlist from forming.
Sen. Denise Ricciardi, a Bedford Republican, said in a statement to the Bulletin that the law “simply makes it easier for eligible families to participate in the scholarship program and return to work.”
“Because of the safeguards in the bill, like a family screening process, the program is not expected to expand eligibility or create any new costs for the state once it is up and running,” Ricciardi said.
Historically, many families who are eligible for the program have not participated in it, but increased enrollment numbers have followed expanded eligibility. Heller pointed to April data from the state that showed the number of children using scholarships has jumped 66% since the expanded eligibility went into effect in January 2024, adding another 1,700 children to the program.
Workforce grant uncertain, tax relief quashed
The budget directs DHHS to ask the federal government for permission to use TANF reserve funds “for the purpose of financing recruitment and retention bonus and benefit grants for New Hampshire child care employees.”
It’s not yet clear whether the federal government will approve the use of the money.
The child care workforce in the state faces massive stressors, with high turnover and low wages. With cost-of-living adjustments, New Hampshire’s child care workers “have the second-lowest wages in the country,” according to a primer from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy. (The Couch Family Foundation, which funds the New Hampshire Bulletin’s early care and education reporting position, provided support for this research.)
To put the intersecting challenges of the sector into perspective, the researchers found that “if a child care worker were to purchase center-based care for their own infant and four-year old, this expense would utilize 98.6 percent of the average New Hampshire child care worker salary.”
One possible method for cutting down costs for providers was ultimately quashed this year. Senate Bill 275, led by Dover Democratic Sen. David Watters, sought to provide property tax relief for some child care agencies, as well as allowing school building aid to be used for some pre-kindergarten programs.
The Senate voted, 16-8, along party lines, to shoot down the legislation. Sen. Timothy Lang, a Sanbornton Republican, argued the bill was too broad and would deplete limited school building aid resources.
Watters said it became apparent, once the session was rolling, that there would be “real resistance” from his Republican colleagues on the issue. But looking ahead to the future, he said the chamber has historically been able to get “some very good things done in a very strong, unanimous, bipartisan fashion.”
“The governor campaigned on this. We all did, Republicans and Democrats,” Watters said. “We all campaigned on … housing and on child care and on energy and, you know, some other things. But you know, I mean, the very top priorities are for housing and child care.”
Looking ahead
State investments are needed to make significant changes to the child care landscape in New Hampshire, some of those involved in the issue said.
Shannon Tremblay, director of the New Hampshire Child Care Advisory Council, enacted by the Legislature in 1995, emphasized a need for the state to find revenue sources to invest in child care. She said that should include revisiting the recently eliminated interest and dividends tax, which generated tens of millions of dollars for the state each year.
“We’re rich. I mean, we’re one of the most wealthiest states, but we don’t invest that money,” Tremblay said. “And if you say the word taxes, you know, people tend to cringe, but I think that’s what it’s really going to take.”
MacKenzie Nicholson, New Hampshire’s senior director of the advocacy group MomsRising, said she wants to “see a system that actually invests in child care.” Small policy fixes that act as “little Band-Aids aren’t doing enough to cover the gaping wound that is our child care crisis right now,” she said.
“The reason that we didn’t really lose child care dollars in the budget process this year is because there is none to cut. As a state, we don’t invest in child care,” Nicholson said. “The money that comes in comes from the federal government, and so there’s no way to offset the costs for families or for providers, who ultimately are the workforce behind the workforce.”
On the issue of child care, Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, a Portsmouth Democrat and the Senate’s minority leader, said “we just continue to not do enough.” That could have serious consequences for the state, she said.
“This is a huge issue, you know, for people that want to come and build a family and live and work in New Hampshire,” Perkins Kwoka said. “The availability of child care and housing is just fundamental to them being able to move and build their lives here, and if we don’t accommodate it, they’re going to find and build their lives somewhere else.”
