State legislators on Tuesday plan to review newly enacted rules that require low-income families who use subsidized day-care programs to pay a larger share of the cost.
The increases, which went into effect Oct. 1, were designed to allow more families to participate in the programs. But critics say that though the fees may open the programs to more families, they also are forcing many other parents to remove their children from the programs.
“Their goal to service more people is a valid one, but I don’t think we should be doing that by raising the revenue from low-income families,” said State Sen. Miguel del Valle (D-Chicago), who last week introduced a Senate resolution asking the Department of Human Services to postpone the higher fees until their impact could be assessed.
The legislature authorized the Department of Human Services to devise new co-payment fees under the welfare reform legislation passed last year. Now, parents qualify even if they are not on public aid. Any family earning less than 50 percent of the state median income qualifies for a child-care subsidy.
Parents now pay a sliding fee based upon their income. Under the old program, a single parent making $11,500 a year, with one child in day care, paid a 25-cent a week co-payment. Under the new program, that same parent pays $11 a week.
Under the old program, the maximum payment for a person earning $21,234 was $48 a week. Under the new plan, that co-payment has dropped to $44 a week.
The expansion of the child-care program is paid for in part by the higher fees and by $100 million the state added to the child-care budget. The legislature budgeted $380 million to pay for subsidized child care.
“The old fees were completely unrealistic,” said Richard Valenti, associate director for the state’s office of Childcare and Family Services.
The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, a bipartisan committee of 12 legislators from the Illinois House and Senate, is to hold the hearing on the new co-payments in the Thompson Center.
The committee can object to rules proposed by a state agency. The agency, however, can refuse to make changes suggested by the committee.
Last month, the Department of Human Services reduced co-payments as a result of complaints received during the public comment period that ended Sept. 2, Valenti said.
For example, a parent with two children in child-care and making $25,000 a year would have paid 25 cents a week for child-care under the old system. Under the new system, she would have paid $26 a week; a sum that was reduced 15 percent–to $22 a week–after public outcry over the increases, Valenti said.
In other words, out of the approximately $1,000 a month it costs the state to provide child-care for the two children, the parent would pay $88.
“We still think it’s a bargain,” said Valenti, who stressed that under the old system as many as 30,000 parents were on waiting lists to get their children into subsidized child-care programs.
Nonetheless, Sandra Schaefer, child-care director for Erie Neighborhood House, a non-profit organization in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood, said, “We are very concerned. Our state funding requires that we be fully enrolled.” A dozen children have been withdrawn from a school-age program that normally serves 85 children, she said.
At the Edison L. Hoard After School Program, across the street from the Robert Taylor Homes on the city’s South Side, almost 20 children have dropped out, said Sybil Jackson, who runs the program.
The new program also has hurt full-time students such as Bertha Rebolledo, 23, a single mother, who will no longer be eligible for child-care subsidies after next June unless she also works 25 hours a week.
“They would rather I quit school and get some menial job than try to get a bachelor’s degree and stay off welfare for good,” said Rebolledo.
But the expanded program has helped others, such as Rachael Tovar, 40, a legal assistant making $26,000 who finally got subsidized child-care for her two toddlers, ages 2 and 3. She had been paying $600 a month in child care; now she pays $190.
“I thank God that we finally can afford to buy food now,” Tovar said, “and that’s not an overstatement either.”
