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Showing stories 1 - 15 of 72.
Looking Out for the Caregivers
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Wednesday, May 30 @ 15:22:16 EDT by kkurth
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Employers have been put on notice: They can't treat caregivers differently.
Federal law does not specifically prohibit discrimination against those with family caregiving responsibilities, but new enforcement guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission explains how existing laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender, pregnancy or disability can apply to caregivers, as well. It offers examples: denying a female worker with young children an opportunity that is available to men with young children or refusing to hire a worker who is a single parent of a child with a disability on the assumption that caregiving responsibilities will make the worker unreliable.
The EEOC typically issues enforcement guidance just a few times a year, and courts often refer to it in rulings. Such guidance also often marks a trend in litigation the EEOC may take on. The number of caregiver discrimination suits filed by the EEOC is expected to increase.
The commission started to look at the issue as it became clear that caregivers -- both men and women -- were making up much more of the workforce than in the past.
EEOC employees will be trained in how to recognize caregiver discrimination and connect it to current laws. "It really gives our people a chance to see something new," said Stuart Ishimaru, an EEOC commissioner.
"We needed to make sure our investigators are trained" to connect caregiver issues to other types of discrimination, said Naomi C. Earp, EEOC chairwoman. "And if we can help employers, we killed two birds with one stone."
The new guidance, however, does not mean that caregivers are given extra leeway. They can still be fired for not doing their jobs, like anyone else.
The guidance is "extremely important" for a number of reasons, said Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, who began to study caregiver discrimination in 1989.
First, it puts employers and employees on notice "that you cannot treat mothers and other caregivers differently based on assumptions of how they will or should behave," she said. "That's important because bias against mothers is the most open form of discrimination in the workplace today."
The guidance also shows that though discrimination against mothers is the "most common form of caregiver discrimination, it's not the only form," she said. The guidance gives examples of discrimination against adults caring for nieces, nephews, grandchildren, parents and spouses, and also states clearly that caregiver bias affects men as well as women.
In addition, Williams said, the guidance is clear that stereotyping by an employer, whether conscious or unconscious, is evidence of employment discrimination. "What's typically called unconscious discrimination really is discrimination that is automatic and uncorrected," she said. "And this guidance will help people focus on that kind of discrimination and take the time to correct the effect of it."
Full text available at the Washington Post
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MD - Plan to improve child care unveiled
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Friday, April 06 @ 09:40:53 EDT by kkurth
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Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger says he hopes to strengthen the nation's child care industry and ease the financial burden it puts on working families with a bill that he announced at a day care facility in Hanover.
"Blue collar, white collar, whatever," Ruppersberger said, "families are suffering and we need to give relief to these people."
Ruppersberger, a Cockeysville Democrat and soon-to-be grandfather, announced Wednesday at the Childtime Learning Center that when Congress returns from the holiday break, he will introduce the Right Start Child Care and Education Act of 2007.
One goal of the bill is to increase the child care tax credit from $3,000 to $5,000 per child, with a limit of $10,000.
According to a report issued by the Maryland Committee for Children, the average estimated day care cost for a household with two children in the state can run from $8,993 in Somerset County to $19,920 in Howard County.
Derek Spink, an Odenton resident, has been taking his 18-month-old son, Conner, to Childtime since he was 7 weeks old and estimates that he and his wife, who both hold full-time government jobs, pay more than $12,000 a year for child care.
He said their current tax credit is $600 because of their tax bracket.
"Anything would help," Spink said.
Maryland has close to 200,000 licensed child care centers, all of which are generally at capacity, and "the demand is expected to triple by 2011," said JoAnn Johnson, vice president of operations for the Learning Care Group, Childtime's parent company.
Workers have the option of contributing $5,000 into the Dependent Care Assistance Program, which means they get $5,000 worth of on-site child care or reimbursement from their employer for off-site care. This contribution is made with pretax dollars, which means savings at tax time.
It may not be the best option for some families, however, said Steve Jost, legislative director for Ruppersberger. The bill is about increasing options, he said.
Businesses receive a maximum tax credit of $150,000 as an incentive to construct workplace child care facilities. The bill would boost that to $225,000, Ruppersberger said. The bill would also provide incentives to improve the quality of child care.
College graduates with degrees in early childhood education, child care or a related field would receive a credit of $2,000, for a maximum of three years, to work as child care providers.
Child care is second to mortgages as American families' greatest expense, Ruppersberger said.
Spink said that if he and his wife have a second child, their monthly child care bills will eclipse their mortgage payments.
"Middle America needs help," Ruppersberger said, "I think helping children is the best way."
Available at the Baltimore Sun
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Roberts’ child care legislation in wage bill
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Wednesday, January 24 @ 09:29:38 EST by emohan
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A measure to improve access to child care that Sen. Pat Roberts has been pushing for more than a decade is closer than ever to becoming law.
The Senate agreed Tuesday to include the Kansas Republican’s legislation in its version of a bill to increase the minimum wage.
Roberts’ plan would provide incentives to small businesses to offer child care for employees with children. The measure is one of several incentives and tax breaks meant to soften the effect of a minimum wage increase on small businesses.
Those breaks for small businesses are not included in a measure passed by the House earlier this month that raises the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over 26 months.
Boosting the minimum wage was one of the Democrats’ top legislative priorities for the first 100 hours of the new session of Congress.
The Senate is expected to vote on the minimum wage bill next week.
“As we debate the issue of minimum wage, we cannot forget the impact on the employers who hire these minimum wage workers,” Roberts said. “In Kansas, small businesses employ the majority of hardworking families.”
Under Roberts’ measure, small businesses would be eligible for grants of up to $500,000 for costs related to providing child care for employees. Businesses could work together or with other local child care agencies to offer day care services and would be required to match federal funds to participate.
Full text available at Lawrence Journal-World
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Proposed Legislation To Get Lead Out of Child Care Facilities
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Wednesday, October 04 @ 09:32:40 EDT by emohan
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U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) today said that they have introduced legislation that would help protect children from lead poisoning by requiring that all non-home-based child care facilities, including Head Start program locations and kindergarten classrooms, be lead-safe within five years. The legislation would establish a $42.6 million grant program to help local communities pay to make these facilities safe.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 310,000 children nationwide have toxic lead levels in their blood, with poor and minority children disproportionately at risk. The problem of lead contamination is especially great in the Midwest and Northeast where 40 percent of child care centers were built prior to 1960.
Illinois has the highest lead poisoning rate in the nation. According to an Illinois Department of Public Health report, Illinois amounted to 20.5 percent of all elevated blood levels reported nationwide. The report also found that African-American children are more than three times as likely to suffer from elevated lead levels and Hispanic children are more than twice as likely to suffer from elevated lead levels.
Each year in New York State, an additional 10,000 children under the age of six are newly identified as having elevated blood lead levels, and over 200,000 children in New York have had documented lead poisoning between 1992 and 2004. Exposure to lead results in increased expenses each year for New York in the form of special education and other education expenses; medical care for lead-poisoned children; and expenditures for delinquent youth and other needing special supervision. It is estimated that these increased expenses, as well as lost earnings, exceed $4 billion annually.
The Lead Poisoning Reduction Act of 2006 requires all non-home-based child care facilities to be certified lead-safe in five years. It establishes a five-year, $42.6 million grant program to help communities reduce lead exposure in day care centers, Head Start programs and kindergartens. It also establishes best practices for communities to test for and reduce lead hazards.
Lead paint in older buildings is a primary source of exposure, but significant lead exposure can also come from tap water. Lead is rarely found in the source water used for public water supplies, but more commonly enters tap water as a result of corrosion of water lines, pipes, and household plumbing. Lead in drinking water can be a significant source of lead exposure, and can account for as much as 60 percent of the exposure for infants and children who consume formula and concentrated juices. Children suffer the greatest negative health impacts, since lead adversely impacts physical and mental development, decreased intelligence, behavioral problems, and can also lead to kidney damage, anemia, reproductive disorders, seizures, coma, and even death.
Full text available at WIFR.com
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HHS waives rule requiring matching funds in hard-hit states
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Wednesday, July 12 @ 11:22:24 EDT by emohan
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The Department of Health and Human Services freed up $2 million for child-care programs for low-income parents in Mississippi on Tuesday, and, in a separate decision, added $2.4 million to the state's efforts to prevent a bird flu outbreak.
Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt waived a rule that would have required Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana to come up with matching funds in order to receive some federal child-care money.
"We are dedicated to helping children and families recovering from hurricane disasters," Leavitt said. "These waivers will provide parents with much-needed child-care services as they continue to rebuild their lives."
The waiver means Mississippi will receive $2 million that would have otherwise required a matching contribution from Jackson. State officials had asked for the waiver to free up more money for hurricane recovery.
The money is part of $55.7 million in federal Child Care and Development Funds, which subsidizes child-care vouchers for needy families in the state.
More than 13,000 Magnolia State families used the subsidies in 2004. In order to qualify for the subsidized child-care programs, a Mississippi parent of three must earn less than $35,000 per year.
Full text available at The Sun Herald
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Nebraska Agencies worried about proposed budget
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Friday, April 21 @ 11:39:03 EDT by emohan
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How do you fund a war, a more secure nation and a constituency clamoring for tax relief? If you’re President George W. Bush crafting the 2007 budget, you look for programs to cut spending. And one of the places you pick is domestic spending.
And that has local and state human service agencies and education providers for disadvantaged students worried. Really worried.
The Bush proposal cuts billions from such programs as special education, Head Start, child care, supplemental food programs, food stamps, children’s health insurance and home energy assistance programs.
If passed, the budget proposal would also take the heart out of community action programs such as Lincoln Action Program, which seeks to help low-income families in Lancaster and Saunders counties become independent.
“It’s not good,” said LAP executive director Sue Hinrichs. “It’s not in the best interest of low-income and working families.”
Three-fourths of families LAP works with are employed, Hinrichs said. “But they are still struggling daily with paying for child care, health care, gas and utilities.”
The core funding for community action agencies — about 1,000 across the country and nine in Nebraska — is Community Services Block Grants, said Kathy Stokes, LAP grants and communication manager.
Block grants pay for the administration of the agency so its leaders can find grants and donations to pay for programs and services, and make sure those programs are carried out effectively and efficiently.
Bush’s proposal would take away those grants.
The Bush budget would focus on the country’s priorities and hold or reduce discretionary spending. It would eliminate or reduce 141 programs not getting results or fulfilling essential priorities.
The Senate passed its version of the budget earlier, restoring some of the money taken from human services and education. But people who are closely watching the debate say the House seems willing to go along with many of Bush’s proposed reductions.
That would freeze domestic spending, increase defense spending by 7 percent — outside of spending on the war in Iraq — and raise homeland security spending by nearly 4 percent.
Full text available at the Journal Star
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Federal Plan for Changes in Child Care Draws Protest
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Friday, March 10 @ 14:07:13 EST by emohan
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A Bush administration plan to reorganize programs for low-income families has brought protests by service agencies around the country, which fear it signals a waning in the federal commitment to child care assistance for working mothers.
Some 240 agencies and advocacy groups have signed a letter to the secretary of health and human services, Michael O. Leavitt, asking him not to downgrade the Child Care Bureau, a unit created by the Clinton administration to oversee subsidies for low-income mothers and improve the quality of child care.
The proposed change, the letter says, "minimizes the importance of child care assistance in supporting working families, particularly low-income parents."
The letter was delivered yesterday to the Department of Health and Human Services and to Congressional leaders, said Helen Blank of the National Women's Law Center, which collected the signatures. Signers included the Child Welfare League of America, the Y.W.C.A. and Easter Seals.
The apparent downgrading of the Child Care Bureau has also stirred concern in Congress, where Democrats and Republicans are discussing an appeal to the administration.
The plan, which requires no Congressional approval, was made known to lawmakers in a letter from Mr. Leavitt on Feb. 22. Among other changes to improve "efficiency and effectiveness," he wrote, the bureau, which now stands alone, is to be folded into the Office of Family Assistance, which oversees the drive to put welfare mothers into jobs.
All sides agree that child care subsidies are needed to help welfare recipients, the poorest of the poor, go to work. But by law, federal aid is also given more widely to mothers in low-paying jobs, who may be struggling to stay off welfare in the first place.
"Child care assistance is critical for low-income working families as well as those transitioning off welfare," said Joan Lombardi, who in 1995 became the first chief of the bureau and now heads the Children's Project, a research and advocacy group in Washington. "This is a step backward for working families."
Full text available at the New York Times
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U.S. Plan to Eliminate Survey of Needy Families Draws Fire
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Friday, March 03 @ 11:36:48 EST by emohan
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Researchers and legislators are rallying to block a Bush administration plan to scupper a U.S. survey widely used to improve federal and state programs for millions of low-income and retired Americans.
President George W. Bush's proposed budget for fiscal 2007, which begins this October, includes a Commerce Department plan to eliminate the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).
The proposal marks at least the third White House attempt in as many years to do away with federal data collection on politically prickly economic issues ranging from mass layoffs to employment discrimination.
By mid-day Wednesday, some 415 liberal and conservative economists and social scientists had signed a letter to be sent to Congress Thursday urging that the survey be fully funded because it ''is the only large-scale survey explicitly designed to analyze the impact of a wide variety of government programs on the well being of American families.''
A group of Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives reportedly are leading a drive to get lawmakers to sign a similar letter defending the survey to be sent to the White House.
Full text available at Yahoo News
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Department of Defense Plans to Boost Access to Military Child Care
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Monday, January 30 @ 10:34:03 EST by emohan
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The Defense Department will use a multifaceted approach to boost the availability of child care services for military families, a senior official said here yesterday.
"We project the (child care) needs as greater than what we're offering at this point," Jan Witte, director of DoD's Office of Children and Youth, told American Forces Press Service and the Pentagon Channel.
The ongoing realignment of U.S. forces from longstanding overseas bases in Europe and elsewhere to stateside installations and high operational tempos caused by the war against terrorism are placing demands on the military child care system, Witte said. Consequently, DoD wants to "jump-start" its military child care programs to provide more spaces for the children of active-duty and reserve-component servicemembers.
Full text available at the U.S. Department of Defense
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A hard budget for N.C. families
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Friday, December 02 @ 13:04:04 EST by emohan
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One week before Thanksgiving the U.S. House of Representatives voted to make it harder for some children in North Carolina to get a good meal. The House also voted to increase the cost of prescription drugs for low-income families, to make it easier for parents to skip out on paying child support, to cut foster care benefits for children living with their grandparents or other relatives, and voted in favor of other life-altering changes that reflect the wrong priorities for families.
The N.C. Child Advocacy Institute recently released data about the status of families living in every state House and Senate district in North Carolina. These Legislative District Data Cards, available on line at www.ncchild.org, present 2000 U.S. Census data to show that some children in every legislative district grow up in economically deprived homes, strive to stay connected to schools, struggle to speak an unfamiliar language, live with disabilities or are being reared in single-parent and grandparent-headed households.
The facts in these data cards show clearly that thousands of families across North Carolina would be deeply hurt by the version of the budget passed by the U.S. House of Representatives
Full text available at The News & Observer
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Child care assistance becomes a lifeline
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Monday, April 25 @ 11:54:41 EDT by emohan
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For a single mom like 30-year-old Jackie Mowder, getting child-care assistance through the Department of Human Services, or DHS, isn’t a benefit; it’s a lifeline.
Full text from www.qctimes.com.
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Child care industry proves big business
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Tuesday, April 19 @ 10:33:14 EDT by emohan
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Early childhood education is big business.
That's one of the conclusions in a report released yesterday by the MIT Workplace Center and the Family Initiative of Legal Momentum, a nonprofit child-care advocacy group.
The report, a compilation of data on early childhood education, stems from a 2004 conference at MIT that examined the impact of child care and early education on the US economy and concluded that investments in such services result in payoffs to communities.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe.
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Child Care Rates Increase for Navy Families In Europe
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Thursday, October 14 @ 09:43:18 EDT by emohan
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The Department of Defense has increased child care fees in the European theater by an average of $1.33 per week beginning Nov. 1.
The increase of 1.5 percent reflects the regional state of inflation and continues to keep Navy Region Europe at the lower end of the band of child care prices Navywide. The increase will go into effect November 1st.
Read the full story at The Navy Newstand.
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U.S. welfare rolls drop
Submitted by fdietrich. Posted on Tuesday, August 24 @ 14:18:26 EDT by fdietrich
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The U.S. government said Monday a drop in the number of welfare recipients in 2003 indicated welfare reform legislation of 1996 was working.
"American families are improving their lives by leaving public assistance and entering the workforce," said Health and Human Services Secretary Thompson.
Complete article in The Washington Times
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Audit of Child Care Finds Excess at IRS
Submitted by fdietrich. Posted on Monday, August 16 @ 10:50:29 EDT by fdietrich
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A Treasury Department review of Internal Revenue Service child care centers has called for improved policy and accounting procedures after highlighting shortcomings including one case in which the IRS spent $35,000 a year to keep one child of an employee in day care.
The audit was carried out by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration at the request of the IRS after the agency raised concerns about the high costs paid by the government for child care centers.
Complet article in the Washington Post
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