Chanell Sanders waited more than five months to receive government assistance to pay for child care for her 3-year-old son, Armon Coffee.
Without it, the Lafayette single mom said she couldn't afford day care, and without day care, she couldn't keep a job.
"I kept calling and kept calling," Sanders said. "I even had jobs, but I had to quit them because I didn't have anyone to watch my baby. I would call, and they would tell me six to eight months. I knew I had to wait."
Armon is now enrolled at Dennis Burton Child Care, and Sanders is working.
Her son was one of 3,000 children in Indiana moved from the state's Child Care and Development Fund voucher program wait list since April. That was when the state released $35 million in stimulus money to reduce the wait list.
"Just to get that letter in the mail was just, wow, it was wonderful," Sanders said, referring to confirmation that the voucher was funded.
Melanie Brizzi is the child care administrator for Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration's Bureau of Child Care, which oversees the voucher program.
Brizzi said the agency's goal with that stimulus money was to get more kids into child care. In addition to the $35 million spent on direct services, the state received $7 million to be spent on quality care initiatives.
Today, the vouchers are funding child care for more than 38,000 Hoosier children. But more than 9,000 are still awaiting funding.
"Having the goal of reduced wait list is kind of an impossible goal," Brizzi said. "As soon as you release more funds, more people apply. ... Since the economy took a downturn, we've seen the wait list growing."
The vouchers are generally distributed on a regional and county-by-county basis. So there's a limited number for each area of the state. Slots open as families leave the program. If there isn't a good turnover, families can wait months.
That's what happened in Tippecanoe County, which was part of the reason so many of the stimulus-funded spots landed there. The 382 slots in Tippecanoe County represent 12.7 percent of the state's total.
"It wasn't a matter of quantity on wait list (in a particular county), it was length of time," Brizzi said of how the 3,000 slots were allocated.
Marilyn Redmon, executive director of Tippecanoe County Child Care, said its five child care centers took on about 40 of the stimulus-funded vouchers. The centers, which serve about 300 children, already offer a sliding fee scale based on family income.