Huffington Post: Low-Income Mothers Trapped on Welfare without Affordable Child Care

The tremendous challenge families confront in trying to move off welfare and gain self-sufficiency without stable, affordable child care is powerfully illustrated in a recent article in the Huffington Post. The article tells the stories of mothers in California who are doing everything they can to support themselves and take care of their children, yet are losing ground due to lack of help paying for child care.

Many low-income families in California are unable to receive child care assistance due to long waiting lists. The unmet need has only grown in recent years due to cuts in funding—and the governor is proposing additional cuts that could result in 62,000 more children losing access to child care and early education programs.

In many cases, the only way for families in California to receive child care assistance is to go on welfare, as this would give them priority for help. The mothers interviewed in the article question the logic of this approach. As one mother says, “I’m paying taxes. I’m spending my money and supporting the economy, and if you take away my child care, I’m going to have to quit my job and go on welfare again. Then they’re going to pay my child care immediately. How does this make financial sense?” She recognizes that this approach doesn’t make sense, for families or for the state’s economy. How long will it take for policy makers to recognize this too?

Families in California are not alone in their struggles to receive help affording child care. The National Women’s Law Center’s October 2011 report on state child care assistance policies, which is cited in the Huffington Post article, shows that many states are failing to provide the support families need, and that many moved backward between 2010 and 2011. And state cuts to child care assistance have continued into 2012. Maryland’s waiting list for child care assistance, started in February 2011, had over 16,800 children on it as of February 2012. Florida has over 75,000 children on its waiting list.

To help families straining to make ends meet, it is essential that Congress provide additional funding for child care in the FY 2013 appropriations. A $825 million increase, as the President proposed in his budget, would prevent a further decrease in the number of families able to receive child care assistance and allow for new investments to improve the quality of care. There are already far too many families without the child care help they need—we should be working to reduce that number, not allowing it to increase further.