President Donald Trump's Department of Health and Human Services slashed staffing at a key agency overseeing child care, sparking worries that an already strained system keeping American children safe could be further jeopardized, reported Semafor on Tuesday.
"The Administration of Children and Families — which funnels federal funds to state governments and community organizations for things like child care, early education, foster care, and child protection services — has lost an estimated 40 percent of its employees in the last four months, according to a tracker compiled by former staff and shared with Semafor," reported Eleanor Mueller. Specifically, the personnel at ACF "fell from about 2,400 in January to about 1,500 following this month’s latest most recent round of layoffs, per the informal tracker."
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Experts are fearful of the impact this could have on child care nationwide.
“You can’t cut an office by 45 percent and expect it to do the same job,” said former ACF official and Century Foundation fellow Ruth Friedman. “Children are going to be less safe; the cost of care is going to go up for parents; and it’s going to be harder to find.”
All of this comes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's health secretary, has come under fire for broad-based layoffs at the agency, as well as his history of promulgating conspiracy theories about public health.
In particular, he has repeatedly and baselessly claimed pediatric vaccines are dangerous and is now tasked with trying to contain a deadly measles outbreak that has flared up in Texas. While publicly claiming he supports the vaccine, Kennedy has privately repeated his conspiracy theories to the families of children who died in the outbreak, while at the same time suggesting it could actually be a good thing to contract measles and advising infected children be treated with cod-liver oil despite warnings to the contrary from doctors.
