Illinois will give every eligible child care worker in the state a one-time $1,000 bonus in an effort to stem high turnover and ease a staffing crunch that has challenged the industry.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the bonuses Monday as part of a broader package of child care recovery efforts, saying that the additional cash will help stabilize a field that is central to the state’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pritzker also said Monday that his administration will expand a child care subsidy program to cover three months of child care or after school care costs for children whose parents are unemployed and seeking work.

The child care subsidy program, which Pritzker has expanded in his tenure, previously only covered costs for about 93,400 children whose parents are working or attending school. To be eligible, families must have a household income within 200% of the federal poverty level; for a family of four in Illinois, that threshold is about $4,400 a month.

Parents are charged co-pays based on a sliding scale, and the state picks up the rest of the cost. In Illinois, according to the organization Child Care Aware, the average monthly price of full-time child care is $773 per child. Married couple households pay an average of 11% of their income on child care, while single parent households pay 29%.

Read the full article about supporting child care workers by Cassie Walker Burke at Chalkbeat.