Guest Post: Vital Childcare Subsidy Underfunded

Below is a guest post from Clinton MacSherry, Director of Public Policy for the Maryland Family Network.

The Child Care Subsidy Program (CCSP) is critical to helping parents re-enter and remain in the workforce. It is also critical to providing the high quality early care vital to children’s success in school and later in life. Yet the CCSP has been starved of funds nearly to the point of dysfunction.  If we are committed to the twin goals of economic recovery and education—to the short- and long-term quality of our workforce and our economy—then the chronic underfunding of child care must end.

 

Quality child care is an enormous expense.  Subsidizing the cost of child care allows low-income parents to earn and children to learn.  In response to steep federal funding cuts (federal funding is half what it was in FY 2010) Maryland has increased state funding for CCSP, which is commendable but has proven insufficient. In February 2011 the state imposed an enrollment freeze on CCSP.  More than 20,000 children were placed on a wait list.  

Parents confronted with this situation have few options, and none of them are good.  They may pull older children out of school to stay home and babysit younger siblings, place young children in substandard and possibly unsafe arrangements, or face the prospect of losing their jobs.  In November 2012 savings achieved through the enrollment freeze allowed the wait list to be partially opened, but it remains in place for many of the “working poor.”

The enrollment freeze is CCSP’s most visible problem, but hardly the only one.  

Federal guidelines recommend that subsidy rates be pegged to the 75^th percentile of the market rate, ensuring that low-income families have access to quality care.  Maryland last met that guideline a decade ago.  Current reimbursement rates fall below the 15^th percentile, relegating families to the cheapest care in their communities.  Meanwhile, family eligibility remains fixed at a decade-old level (a family of three has to make less than $30,000 annually to qualify) and parent co-payments pose an enormous burden.  For parents to earn and children to learn, CCSP funds must increase.