Child care advocates fear that low-income parents will keep their kids out of child care programs because of a shortage of tuition aid.
The state this month reached a breaking point – more applicants than money available – and had to create a waiting list for parents seeking child care services, according to a state agency head.
Parents who are struggling financially and who would typically qualify for tuition assistance will find themselves waiting as late as summer 2010 if they apply now for help. But that could be too late for some.
With no other government programs offering help, many parents will choose cheaper and substandard child care, or just quit low-paying jobs to stay home with their toddlers, advocates say.
“Circumstances like these propel people back into cycles of dependency,” said Jane Marquis, the coordinator of child care at the Adult Learning Center in Nashua.
“Children are a direct reflection of their parents. If parents are doing well, children are doing well ... So this feels like ‘Let's pick on the poor some more.'”
The budget for child care tuition aid was not cut, said Ellen Wheatley, administrator for the Child Development Bureau at the Division for Youth, Child & Families.
Rather, the state is not increasing the fund, so people newly applying for help will have to wait, Wheatley said. Parents of children who already receive this assistance and continue to qualify will not be affected, unless they drop out of the program and later re-apply, she said.
Families who earn up to 21⁄2 times the federal poverty standard qualify for scholarships, Wheatley said.
The tuition amount subsidized by the state depends on a family's means and how old the child is, she said. As a toddler ages, the level of direct hands-on care diminishes and a program becomes less expensive, meaning parents have to assume more of the cost, she said.
Because of the weak economy, the number of parents applying for aid has increased by about 1,200 over a 17-month span, Wheatley said.
When about 7,200 children were subsidized in early 2008, that figure was manageable, but this July the amount grew to 8,400 children and became the tipping point of what the program can handle, she said. DCYF had no choice but to create the waiting list, she said.
The scholarship freeze will put low-income parents into a bind, Marquis said.
Low-income parents who would rely on the Adult Learning Center will particularly feel the pinch, she said. Seventy percent of the infants, toddlers and young kids in the center's child-care program have some form of subsidized tuition, she said.
The state estimates that as many as 1,100 children will be waiting until next July. Parents on the list will receive help in the order they went on.
Because the state just instituted the waiting list for scholarships, it is too soon to know how many parents in the Nashua area will be affected, Marquis said.
But Marquis and other child-care advocates predict that it will be a dire situation, she said.
“It'll have a devastating effect on families, and these are working families,” said Jackie Cowell, director of the advocacy group, Early Learning NH. “This is not just a program for those who are the most vulnerable, but those who need just a little help.”
Cowell said she worries that some parents will “settle” for home-based child-care programs unmonitored by the state Child Care Licensing Bureau – small outfits that she said will have “under-the-table standards.”
“Then you will have families who can't work because they can't find anything,” Cowell said. “They can't leave their 1-year-olds at home. So they may have to decide they can't keep working.”
The budgets of private charities and municipal governments are so stretched that it's unrealistic to expect their help, she said.