Advocates are urging state lawmakers to support an innovative legislative proposal that would preserve child care subsidies for low-income working families, despite a $55 million cut to funding in this year’s budget.   The plan, originally advanced as part of this year’s budget debate by the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) and the Empire Justice Center, calls for a temporary exemption of public assistance (PA) participants with infants from work requirements until the budget crisis has passed   This would effectively free-up child care subsidy slots which would otherwise be allocated to PA recipients attending work related activities and utilize them to support low-income working families.  Without this approach, it is those slots currently being utilized by working families which would bear the brunt of budget cuts.

Last week, State Senator Diane Savino and Assembly Member Michele Titus introduced legislation (SB-5586; AB-8101) that would enact the proposal.  The bills would extend the work requirement exemptions for parents with children up to three months of age to those with children up to one year old.

“If you are going to cut $55 million out of the child care program, let’s look at the ways we can maximize use of the funds we have,” says Susan Antos, Senior Staff Attorney at Empire Justice Center told NYNP in March when we first reported on the proposal. “Let’s help people who have jobs retain those jobs.”

“Given these difficult economic times, this is a temporary solution that can help us weather the crisis until budget revenues come back to a normal rate,” says Bich Ha Pham, Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research at FPWA, at that time.  “These temporary exemptions would be targeted at PA recipients who are unemployed but required to attend work related activities such as Workfare and soft skills training.  Do we want to require that at the cost of having employed people lose child care subsidies and lose jobs they already have?  Most of those people would likely wind up back on welfare because they won’t be able to maintain employment.”

A total of 24 other states already use this approach and three other states have enacted similar but even longer exemptions.  Advocates had originally sought an exemption for parents of children up to the age of two which they believed would have preserved a total of 8,000 existing child care slots for families who already have them and are already working.

The Empire Justice Center is urging supporters of child care to send a message to their legislators asking them to support the bill.   Click here to send an email of support.

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