Fallout from the state's longest budget standoff on record is rippling through California, with scores of healthcare providers on the brink of bankruptcy, schools and community colleges scaling back offerings and contractors struggling to hang on.
The U.S. House of Representatives has acted to require that day-care providers tell parents about their insurance status in order to receive federal grants.
Two large labor unions joined Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut at a press conference today in support of a proposal to add $200 million annually to a federal block grants program for child care.
Every year, Arkansans are passing up on about $280 million in state and federal benefits, Gov. Mike Beebe said Monday in announcing a $1.4 million pilot program aimed at helping low-income residents to receive all of the benefits for which they are eligible.
State officials have shifted $10 million in funding to provide child care vouchers to 2,000 children of parents working to get off of welfare.
The federal government wants back $1.18 million in money for poor families that Idaho spent on a poison control hot line and vaccination registry.
The federal government warned the state this week it faces a $10 million penalty for not moving enough welfare recipients into jobs and off public rolls in 2005.
April Gross is a not a statistic. She's not a label. She's a 25-year-old mother struggling for a better life.
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.
A change to a state welfare reform program will require participants to work to continue receiving checks and has a local contractor scrambling to find open positions for the new workers.