Child Care

Recently, working parents in Oklahoma and New Mexico received some welcome news. State officials in these states reversed policies that would have made it more challenging for parents who need help paying for child care.

In June of this year, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services proposed to decrease funding for the state’s child care assistance program. Eligibility for child care assistance was set to be cut back and parents who receive help were set for an increase in their copayments as of August 1. Due to a disagreement over how the decision for program cuts was made, there was a delay in implementation until November 1. The good news is that last month the Department of Human Services announced that it had managed to find the funding necessary to avoid these cuts—at least for now.

In 2010 New Mexico stopped serving families who applied for child care assistance who had incomes above 100 percent of poverty ($18,530 a year for a family of three). Previously, families with incomes up to 200 percent of poverty ($37,060 a year for a family of three) applying for child care assistance could receive it. Read more »

Yesterday the Half in Ten campaign released its report Restoring Shared Prosperity. The report, using data from 2010, sets policy benchmarks by which the campaign will track the progress, in every state, of reaching Half in Ten’s goal of cutting poverty in half over the next ten years.

Cutting poverty in half is an important goal for women and their families. If the level of poverty in 2010 were cut in half today:

• More than 23 million fewer people would be in poverty – 8.6 million of whom would be women.
• One in nine, rather than more than one in five children, would be poor.
• Poverty rates for black and Hispanic single mother families would drop to one in four from one in two.

Low- and moderate-income families in New York City who are unable to receive child care assistance struggle to afford good-quality child care that allows children to learn and parents to work, according to a recent case study by the Center for Children’s Initiatives (CCI). While the study was small – it was based on interviews with 83 families eligible for, but unable to receive, child care assistance – its findings are consistent with those of numerous studies of families on waiting lists for child care assistance conducted over several years. When financially strapped families cannot get help paying for care, they often find it challenging to afford the reliable child care that parents need to get and keep a job and stay focused at work, and that children need for a strong start.

Parents who were interviewed by CCI were aware of the research showing the positive impacts that good-quality child care could have on children’s development, and many of them expressed frustration over the fact that it was out of reach for their own children. One parent said, “If I had more money, I would have a caregiver with more experience and fewer children.”   Read more »

An op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times by Paul Osterman (“Yes, We Need Jobs. But What Kind?”) chronicles the enormous challenges that families working for very low wages have in just getting through every day. He writes about the Rio Grande Valley, an area with significant job growth but a median wage that was $8.14 an hour between 2005 and 2008. One out of four employed adults earned less than $6.19. Read more »