Many parents feel the strains of paying for child care, but such costs can be staggering for low-income workers, rivaling the rent or mortgage payment for the biggest chunk of the family budget.
To help, the Maryland State Department of Education increased its child-care subsidies for low-income families recently, the first time in four years.
Under the increases, which took effect Oct. 15, Maryland child-care providers will receive an average of $84.50 per child per week, an additional $4.25 per child per week, on average. This might not sound like much to some people, child advocates say, but every little bit helps the working poor.
"A lot of parents desperately need this," said Marti Worshtil, executive director of the Prince George's Child Resource Center, the county's child-care referral service.
Worshtil said the subsidies encourage lower-income parents to work, seek job training or go to school because the need for transportation and reliable child care are the two biggest hurdles they face.
All states subsidize some child-care costs for lower-income families, said Rolf Grafwallner, Maryland's assistant superintendent for the Division of Early Childhood Development. In Maryland, the Child Care Subsidy Program, formerly called the Purchase of Care program, will distribute $110 million in federal and state funds this fiscal year.
Families qualify for the program based on household income. For example, a family with one adult and two children may not have an income of more than $30,000 annually.
In June, the subsidy program served about 8,100 children in Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Howard, Montgomery, Prince George's and St. Mary's counties, Grafwallner said. They accounted for about one-third of the state total.
The amount of subsidy per child that families receive depends on several factors, including income, number of children, the children's ages and where they live. Parents must work or attend school or job training and must pay for part of the care. The higher subsidies have also brought higher co-pays for families, averaging an additional $1.87 per week per child. That brings the average family co-pay to $70 weekly per child, state officials said. Families that receive welfare assistance pay nothing.
About 6,200 child-care providers, about one-third of the state's licensed providers, accept subsidy vouchers and submit them to the state for reimbursement. Those include day-care centers and in-home providers. Relatives who are unlicensed but care for children informally may be eligible for lower reimbursements, state officials said. If the combination of the subsidy and parents' co-pay amounts to less than what the provider regularly charges, the parent might have to pay the difference.
Clinton Macsherry, director of public policy for the Maryland Committee for Children, said the subsidy increases are "critically important" and "long overdue." He added, however, that the nonprofit child advocacy organization remains concerned that many families still can't afford the care they want. Required co-pay amounts are too high for many, he said, and others struggle to afford good care but have too much income to receive subsidies.
Maryland's child advocates say they have called for increases in child-care subsidies for years. The issue received more attention in 2005, after the General Assembly voted to transfer responsibility for child-care programs from the state's Department of Human Resources to the Maryland State Department of Education, Grafwallner said.
Full text available at the Washington Post