KANSAS CITY—Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Trump and advisor to the president, will visit Kansas City with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar for a child care roundtable on Thursday afternoon at Metropolitan Community College, according to a release from HHS.
Missouri Governor Mike Parson and Senator Roy Blunt will join the first-daughter and HHS Secretary for the event.
President Trump has made working families a focus of his administration. He wants to offer mothers and fathers more choice and flexibility with child care, so they can choose how to balance home and work life in a way that best serves their needs, benefits their children, and allows them to fully participate in the economy, according to Lynn Johnson, Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families (ACF).
The roundtable, hosted by HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), is the 7th in a series of ten roundtables to be hosted nationwide as part of the Trump Administration’s larger effort to support working families by promoting access to child care, a key initiative for the administration.
To most people, this is great news – who doesn’t want a strong economy? But employers are desperate for workers. The inability to fill open jobs is the number one challenge across many sectors of our economy. Meanwhile, there are still thousands of workers, here in our communities, who want to join in and contribute, but face a critical shortfall. I’m talking, of course, about one of the single greatest barriers to economic mobility facing American families today: access to affordable, high-quality child care.
As Assistant Secretary of HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF), I can say unequivocally that one of our most pressing challenges is supporting working families as they raise their children, while balancing home life and work. Presently, the cost of center-based child care for two children, an infant and a 4 year old, exceeds home mortgage costs in 35 states and D.C., and annual median rental payments in every state. However, child care is more than just a major expense for families – it’s also a significant barrier to work.