[Congressional Bills 112th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2135 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

112th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 2135

  To amend the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990 to 
  authorize a national toll-free hotline and website, to develop and 
 disseminate child care consumer education information for parents and 
  to help parents access child care in their community, and for other 
                               purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           February 28, 2012

  Mrs. Murray (for herself and Ms. Mikulski) introduced the following 
  bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, 
                     Education, Labor, and Pensions

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
  To amend the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990 to 
  authorize a national toll-free hotline and website, to develop and 
 disseminate child care consumer education information for parents and 
  to help parents access child care in their community, and for other 
                               purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Child Care and Resources Education 
Act of 2012''.

SEC. 2. PURPOSE.

    The purposes of this Act are--
            (1) to develop and disseminate child care consumer 
        education information for parents; and
            (2) to assist parents in finding safe, affordable, and 
        quality child care in their community.

SEC. 3. FINDINGS.

    Congress makes the following findings:
            (1) Nearly 11,000,000 children under age 5 are in some type 
        of child care setting every week.
            (2) Numerous reports have found that child care is hard to 
        find in many communities throughout the United States.
            (3) A 2010 study by the National Institute of Child Health 
        and Human Development found children who received high-quality 
        care in the first few years of life scored higher on measures 
        of academic and cognitive achievement when the children were 15 
        years old, and were less likely to misbehave, than children 
        enrolled in low-quality care in those years.
            (4) More than 1,000,000 families a year receive assistance 
        in finding child care through a national child care hotline and 
        website, with nearly half the calls to the hotline coming from 
        military families who are faced with deployment and need to 
        find child care in their new community.
            (5) The national child care hotline had 57,000,000 page 
        views by parents looking for child care in their community as 
        well as parents looking for information about selecting a child 
        care provider.
            (6) Over 200,000 publications were mailed to parents last 
        year, in both English and Spanish, by the operator of the 
        national hotline and website, to provide consumer education to 
        parents looking for child care.

SEC. 4. AMENDMENT.

    Section 658O(a) of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act 
of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 9858m) is amended by adding at the end the 
following:
            ``(3) National toll-free hotline and website.--The 
        Secretary shall reserve not less than $1,000,000 of the amount 
        appropriated under this subchapter for each fiscal year for the 
        operation of a national toll-free hotline and website, to 
        develop and disseminate child care consumer education 
        information for parents and to help parents access safe, 
        affordable, and quality child care in their community.''.
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