Facts In Action

An Urban Institute study of low-income families' access to child care subsidies has found that getting and keeping child care subsidies can be so challenging that it undermines the goal of getting parents to work and off of welfare for good. Their report shows that that although child care subsidies are designed to help low-income parents become established in the workforce, the hurdles parents have to jump in order to receive and keep subsidies often conflict directly with this goal.

According to the report, three factors contribute to the ease or difficulty with which families access and retain child care subsidies:

• Funding levels - insufficient resources limit the ability of local agencies to make sufficient staff available to process subsidies, to invest in staff training, and to purchase equipment, such as computers and telephones, which would make local agencies more responsive to the needs of families.
  
  
• State and local policies - policies that require face-to-face meetings for notifying the agencies of any changes in income, employment, marital status, and child care arrangements, excessive paperwork, and short periods of time between recertifications can make the application process for subsidies more difficult.
  
  
• Local agency practices - practices that do not allow caseworkers to be flexible and work with each parent to meet his or her individual needs, that do not allow parents to recertify by phone or fax, and that have short, traditional office hours, can increase the barriers parents face when trying to obtain and keep child care subsidies.

The report's authors provide the following recommendations to policymakers and agencies to help low-income families be better able to access and retain child care subsidies: limiting required face-to-face meetings, making the application process easier, having longer periods between recertification, extending office hours beyond the traditional work day, simplifying other reporting requirements, and promoting coordination of services through multiple agency interactions. The authors note, however, that although these recommendations can make it easier for programs to help low-income families secure and keep subsidies, limited funding can make the implementation of these strategies difficult.

Source:
Navigating the Child Care Subsidy System: Policies and Practices that Affect Access and Retention, G. Adams, K. Snyder, and J.R. Sandfort, Urban Institute, March 2002.

For more information:
contact the Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037, by phone at (202) 833-7200, by email at paffairs@ui.urban.org, or online at www.urban.org.

Facts in Action, June 2002