Natascha Smith has until February to come up with enough money to pay for the child care that now costs just $16 a month for her two daughters.
That’s when the state subsidy that pays for most of her girls’ day care will run out. The subsidy is designed to help get a parent off welfare and through one year of work. February marks Smith’s one-year anniversary in her first full-time job.
Smith, a 25-year-old South Sider, has received about two years’ worth of welfare in between her many jobs. She fears that without some help paying for child care, she’ll have no choice but to quit her $8-an-hour clerical position. With her annual pay of $16,000, she has little to spare after rent, food and CTA tokens. Smith also is expecting her third child in January.
Smith has raised her predicament in a letter, written in cursive on yellow legal paper, to the head of the state’s child-care programs for low-income Illinois parents. She also spoke up, frustration evident in her voice, at a recent hearing on child care and welfare reform.
“I don’t want anything else. Just help me with child care because I want to work,” she said. “I want to continue to work. Otherwise, I’ll be right back applying for public aid because I won’t have a job.”
Hers is one of many complicated situations confronting Illinois as it begins to overhaul how child care is parceled out to the state’s poorest residents. The federal welfare-reform bill that President Clinton signed into law in August ended guaranteed child care for poor families.
Changing how Illinois pays for child care for its low-income families raises questions about the future of all 74,877 children in state subsidized-care programs. It’s uncertain how many of those children’s families will soon no longer qualify for help.
This month, parents and professionals are meeting to grapple with the future of state-subsidized child care. At times, the task seems on a collision course with Illinois’ mandate to get welfare recipients into the working world.
The advocates, providers and state officials who recently hunched over tables discussing the issue in the Illinois Department of Public Aid’s downtown offices think they might have part of the solution: base child-care funding on a parent’s income so that the neediest get the help.
A system based on income does away with the current conglomeration of child-care funding. One of the many strings is a “very arbitrary” one-year deadline that cuts off a newly working parent who might not be able to afford day care, said Michele Piel, manager of child care and development for the Public Aid Department.
“Every time you get a raise, it shouldn’t be wiped out for child care,” Piel said. “We don’t want to create an unintended consequence where people have their earning capability suppressed because they may lose their child care.”
The state hasn’t determined the new higher fees that low-income parents will pay for child care or what the income cutoff will be for subsidized care. But in recent meetings with low-income parents, officials tried to assess the impact of requiring families to pay more.
“Everybody expressed hardship,” Piel said. “The answers ranged from, `I’d have to cut back on even going to the movies’–the little things that add to family life–all the way to, `I’m not sure how I’d keep my telephone on.’ “
Illinois must submit its child-care reform plan to federal regulators by July 1. Until the plan is approved, the state will function with the hodgepodge of programs and eligibility requirements it has used for years.
Under federal welfare reform, Illinois and other states will receive a lump sum for child care. Illinois is expected to spend $250 million to $300 million in the budget year that starts July 1.
Providing child care is made all the more urgent by the push to move parents off welfare and into work. Over the next year, 25 percent of adults in the 175,706 Illinois families receiving benefits under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program must move into jobs or work-related activities such as vocational training. By 2002, half of the eligible adults receiving cash assistance must be working or in job-related programs.
Experts and advocates fear that there won’t be enough child care to handle the influx of new working parents, most of whom are single mothers. Professionals also fear providers sprouting up to handle the demand will not provide high-quality care.
“It’s going to increase every year as more and more people must be working under welfare reform. It’s staggering to even imagine the number,” said Gail Nelson, executive director of the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a day-care center at 2020 W. Roosevelt Rd.
“There is so much work that happens at odd hours and on weekends, and parents need informal child care then,” Nelson said. “I’m terrified of kids being in dangerous situations.”
Amid all of the questions about changing subsidized child care, there is one definite: The amount that low-income parents are required to pay will increase. Currently, a parent who makes less than $21,100 a year must pay $46 a week for subsidized care of one child.
Many low-income parents, including Smith, say that while they can’t afford market prices, they’re willing to pay more to ensure that low-cost child care remains available to them. Smith, a single mom, said the children’s father is not helping the family financially.
Rebecca Browley, a 34-year-old single mother with children ages 4, 6 and 15, said she can’t afford any increase. Under the current state program, she pays nothing.
Browley has been on welfare for six years and is “scared half to death” about getting a job and finding child care, especially if she has to pay for it.
“Where will we get the money to pay more?” she asked. “The money we do get (from working) will go to rent and food, and then they expect us to pay more for baby-sitting?”
If Browley budgets, the $329 she gets in food stamps will last through the month and her $414 cash-assistance check will cover her subsidized rent and other expenses.
In the past, Browley said, she worked in a factory and as a clerical worker, but she said she has had trouble holding a job because her 4-year-old’s Head Start program ends at noon and her 6-year-old gets out of school at 3 p.m. She wonders who will pick up and watch her kids if she gets a full-time job.
Browley attends computer-training classes twice a week. Otherwise, her mornings are spent with her youngest child, Natasha, at the Head Start program at the Carole Robertson Center.
In a 1991 study of AFDC recipients in Illinois, researchers found that 42 percent of parents were prevented from working full-time and 24 percent could not work part-time because of child-care problems.
Experts predict that many of the entry-level jobs for women now on welfare will be at odd hours– nights, second shifts, weekends– hours when traditional child-care centers aren’t open. That will mean that women will end up relying more on relatives and friends.
Experts say such care isn’t the most dependable and is frequently provided by people who, while well-meaning, often lack training in caring for children.
