Skip to contentNational Women's Law Center

Pho Bui, Intern

My Take

Cuts in Child Care Assistance Put Thousands of Kentucky Children at Risk

Posted by Pho Bui, Intern | Posted on: July 09, 2013 at 11:54 am

Starting on Monday, July 1st, Kentucky lowered the income eligibility limit for child care assistance from 150 percent to 100 percent of the federal poverty level. As these drastic cuts go into effect, 8,700 families with 14,300 children are estimated to lose help in paying for child care. The state had already stopped accepting new families into the program earlier this year. Paying for safe, much less high-quality, child care on their limited incomes will be an extraordinary challenge for these families who have lost or been denied help. Some parents will have no choice but to resort to less expensive, potentially less stable child care arrangements. Without reliable child care, low-income parent will have greater difficulties holding onto their jobs.

Catherine Kaiser, a Louisville parent interviewed by WFPL News, fears what she calls the “domino effect” that could result from the child care cuts. “When you lose your assistance program, you lose your job; when you lose your job, you lose your income. When you lose your income, you’ve lost all hope,” she said.

Read more...

Let’s Give Our Kids that Chance!

Posted by Pho Bui, Intern | Posted on: June 05, 2013 at 10:41 am

Growing up with an Asian family background, I was very fond of the legend of Mencius’ mother, who moved three times to find a good place to raise her child. Her strategy clearly was successful, because Mencius went on to become a great philosopher. The story underlines the importance of the environment in which a child develops. President Obama, recognizing the essential role of children’s environments in their learning and growth, has proposed a significant investment in early learning to ensure children have positive experiences in their first years of life, both in and out of the home.

I know how critical the early years are for learning from my own experiences learning different languages. I was born to a mixed nationality family (Vietnamese and Chinese) and later studied abroad in New Zealand and now in America. According to my grandmother, at the age of three, I spoke Chinese so well that the neighbors thought that I was born and raised in China. I continued to speak Chinese at home while speaking Vietnamese at school without any struggle. Having learned both languages early in life, I did not have any difficulty in shifting back and forth between the two. In contrast, learning English in secondary school was not a piece of cake for me.

Even now, while I am sitting here and writing this blog, I am still struggling.

Read more...