In Colorado, 64 different rule books apply to child-care assistance for the state's working poor, each with its own eligibility standards, reimbursement rates and provider pay schedules.
Some counties pay child-care subsidies for single mothers enrolled in job-training programs while others only pay for care if a parent is at a paying job.
Some expedite applications to make sure parents can get their kids enrolled quickly when a job opportunity arises and others dawdle for weeks while the job slips away.
Some pay child-care workers a living wage; others don't come close.
It's a crapshoot - with the welfare of the state's most vulnerable children on the line.
In an effort to preserve a concept of local control that's tantamount to a religion, the state has created a monster of bumbling inefficiency and unequal treatment in the administration of critical child-care assistance.
Top it off with the news this week that $60 million in federal and state money for child care for the poor is sitting around unspent in county slush funds while thousands of Colorado children get substandard care - or none at all - and what we have here is great material for Michael Moore's next scathing documentary.
He could call it "Cheapo."
Now, none of this issue is easy to understand, what with abbreviations like TANF and CCAP littering budget documents everywhere, but it becomes mind-numbingly obtuse when you try to comprehend the bureaucratic labyrinth multiplied by a factor of 64.
So let's just consider some of the consequences of a system of local control that's layered atop federal and state programs designed To End Welfare As We Know It:
A single parent in one county can make 185 percent of the poverty line and receive a child-care subsidy while a family in another county will be denied help if its income is 151 percent of the same poverty line.
A child-care center in Denver that provides the same services to children who come from Adams, Jefferson, Arapahoe or Douglas counties will receive payments at wildly different rates - and not incidentally squander its director's time managing all manner of complex bills and applications.
A family that moves from one county to another will have to reapply for child-care subsidies and risk ineligibility even though nothing but its address may have changed.
The list goes on.
Now, one thing that is consistent statewide is that the application process is so convoluted it makes getting a mortgage look easy, and in most cases it requires re-certification every six months or more often if the parent's work hours change or - heaven forbid - she gets a 30-cent-an-hour raise.
Then there are the quirks that make anybody who has ever relied on child care break out in a cold sweat just thinking about them, such as the rule that says a subsidy for a toddler stops if the mother has another baby and takes maternity leave.
This means that the toddler must give up his place in preschool and risk losing it permanently while his mother takes six weeks off to be with a newborn. Then the mother must reapply and wait for certification all over again before she can return to work.
All this is nutty enough, but the suggestion that the $60 million surplus in funds for child-care subsidies is because all the kids who need care are getting it is truly whacked.
The Colorado Children's Campaign estimates that 62 percent of children under 6 live in families where the parents work outside the home.
Of the families that would be eligible for child-care subsidies in most Colorado counties because they earn 175 percent of the poverty line or less, only about 14.7 percent of the kids have access to child-care assistance.
That number has dropped from 18.5 percent in 2000.
Full text available at the Denver Post
From Early Childhood Focus
Child-care maze cheats recipients
By Sheila Holland
July 12, 2007
July 12, 2007
© Copyright 2008 by Early Childhood Focus