Publications
Press
Conference
Southern Regional
Task Force on Child Care
National Press Club – Washington, DC
December 13, 2000
Remarks by Sarah
Shuptrine, Task Force Chairman
President, Southern Institute on Children and Families
Thank you for being
with us today to release the Report and Action
Plan of the Southern Regional Task Force
on Child Care. My name is Sarah Shuptrine.
I am President of the Southern Institute
on Children and Families, and it is my honor
to chair the Task Force.
The Task Force is composed
of 22 members. At the invitation of the Southern
Institute, appointments were made by governors
in 16 southern states and the mayor of the
District of Columbia. Additional appointments
were made by the Southern Growth Policies
Board and the Southern Institute on Children
and Families, which is the nonprofit public
policy organization leading the initiative.
This initiative has
been made possible by a grant from The David
and Lucile Packard Foundation. The Foundation
is represented here today by Marie Young.
The full membership
of the Task Force is in your press packets.
I would like to introduce the Task Force
members who are here today:
1) Carol Burnett, Director,
Office of Children and Youth, Mississippi
Department of Human Services
2) Pat Cronon, Executive Director, Hand’N’Hand
Child Care Center, Florida
3) Gwen Hamilton, Executive Director, Children’s Cabinet, Office of
the Governor, Louisiana
4) Robert Harbison, Child Advocate, Oklahoma
5) Linda Heisner, Executive Director, Child Care Administration, Maryland
Department of Human Resources
6) J.T. McLawhorn, President and CEO, Columbia (SC) Urban League
7) Joan Ohl, Secretary, West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources
8) Diane Rath, Chair, Texas Workforce Commission
9) Julie Sharpe, Georgia Child Care Council
10) Carrie Thornhill, Vice President, Youth Investment and Community Outreach,
DC Agenda
I’d like to also
introduce members of the Staff Work Group
who are present:
1) Linda Hoke, Senior
Program Manager, Southern Growth Policies
Board
2) Barbara Ferguson Kamara, Executive Director, Office of Early Childhood
Development, DC Department of Human Services
And also, Zenovia Vaughn,
Deputy Director for Child Care at the Southern
Institute.
Never before has there
been a more compelling need in our country
to enact progressive child care policies.
In what the US Department of Labor calls "one
of the most significant social and economic
trends in modern US history," the percentage
of women in the workforce has jumped from
28 percent in 1940 to 60 percent in 1998.
In the South, the number of employed women
with children exceeds the national average.
The title of the Task
Force report is
SOUND INVESTMENTS:
FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR CHILD CARE BUILDS WORKFORCE
CAPACITY AND PROMOTES SCHOOL READINESS
.
The title conveys our intent to get the message
across that child care is not a "soft" public
policy issue. Assuring that safe, affordable,
quality child care is available and accessible
is a public policy issue with far-reaching
consequences for southern states. To develop
and maintain the workforce required to fuel
economic progress throughout the South, greater
investments in strategies that make child
care more accessible and affordable are essential.
To sustain the ability of families to stay
off the welfare rolls, financial assistance
in paying for child care is imperative. To
assure that all children have greater opportunities
to participate in early childhood development
programs that enhance their readiness to
learn, helping families afford quality services
is basic. Despite the huge gap between the
price of child care and the ability of low-
income families to pay, public and private
subsidies for child care are woefully inadequate.
And with millions of
parents working at the lower end of the wage
scale, many leaving the welfare rolls, assistance
in paying for child care is perhaps the most
critical work-support measure in which the
federal government, states and the private
sector can invest. For low-income parents
trying to enter or remain in the workforce,
the high cost of child care can be a deal-breaker
with regard to employment. And the inability
to obtain financial aid restricts access
not only to basic child care but also child
care of sufficient quality to promote early
learning that improves school readiness.
Child care is the third
largest expense for all families with preschool-age
children after housing and food expenditures.
And the expense of child care disproportionately
impacts low-income families, who pay a much
higher percentage of their income on child
care than middle or upper income families.
Studies have shown that minimum wage parents
can spend as much as 40-60 percent of their
income on child care based on the price of
child care in their states. A comparison
of child care costs to the costs of public
tuition showed that in 16 states and the
District of Columbia, the annual cost of
placing a four-year-old child in a full-time
child care center exceeds the cost of annual
public college tuition in every southern
state. So, where’s the financial aid?
Because financial aid
issues are central to helping low-income
families access quality, affordable child
care, the initial focus of the Task Force
is on improving access to financial aid through
public subsidies, tax strategies and corporate
partnerships. Beginning in January 2001,
continued support from The David and Lucile
Packard Foundation will enable the initiative
to conduct state meetings to present and
discuss the Task Force Action Plan, which
I will present in a few minutes. This continued
support will also facilitate collaboration
across the southern region to address additional
issues related to accessing quality child
care.
During its deliberations
this past year, the Task Force held meetings
across the South and received testimony from
professionals, families and representatives
of the business community. The culmination
of the first year of work by the Task Force
is the development of an Action Plan to improve
access to financial aid for families who
need and seek assistance.
The Task Force report
discusses the many reasons why priority attention
must be given to making quality child care
more accessible and more affordable for low-income
families, including:
- the positive effect
child care can have on workforce capacity;
- the advantages child
care can bring to the welfare reform effort;
and
- the much-needed financial
support child care can provide for early
learning opportunities for children in
low-income families.
The report provides
results of a survey of the 16 southern states
and the District of Columbia that collected
detailed information on the state/federal
subsidy system policies and procedures in
each state. State-by-state survey results
are presented in the appendix to the report.
The Task Force identified
the following issues as barriers to child
care financial assistance:
- significant underfunding
of the public child care subsidy system;
- eligibility policies
and systems that hinder access to public
child care subsidies;
- the need to create
employer partnerships;
- the lack of federal
and state tax strategies, e.g., refundable
child care and dependent tax credits.
Across the South, states
surveyed overwhelmingly cited a lack of funding
for child care assistance as the major barrier
to serving all eligible families. The Task
Force report states that insufficient federal
funds have been appropriated under the Child
Care and Development Fund (CCDF) to help
states provide subsidies to all families
within the designated federal target group,
which is those families with income at or
below 85 percent of each state’s median
income level. According to a recent federal
study, in 1998, states obligated all the
available federal mandatory child care funding,
including federal matching funds and still,
nationwide, only 10 percent of income eligible
families received child care assistance.
The percent of income eligible families who
received child care assistance in the southern
states ranged from 4 percent to 24 percent.
New data released last week by the Administration
on Children and Families show only a slight
increase in the percent of eligible families
receiving assistance.
Every state surveyed
reported that families with no current or
previous connection to the welfare system
receive help paying for child care only when – and
if – funds are available. They simply
fall behind welfare related families in the
priority system that has been created to
ration scarce child care subsidies.
The Action Plan developed
by the Southern Regional Task Force on Child
Care calls for bold action by the federal
government, states and the private sector
to make child care financial aid available
and accessible for low-income parents who
need and seek it. The 10 goals and 52 action
steps included in the Action Plan urge public
and private sector leaders to support specific
initiatives, including significant increases
in child care resources, eligibility simplification,
improved customer service, implementation
of tax strategies and creation of employer
partnerships. Task Force members submitted
information about initiatives in their states
that represent progress made toward addressing
the goals and action steps, and brief descriptions
are presented in the report.
The 10 goals and 52
action steps are listed in Chapter 3 of the
report beginning on page 17. I will briefly
specify the 10 goals.
GOAL 1
Federal, state, local and private funds should be sufficient to meet 100%
of need for direct child care assistance, based on initial eligibility
levels at 85% of the state median income. Redetermination levels should
allow families to retain child care assistance until they reach 100% of
the state median income.
GOAL 2
States and communities should broaden their child care eligibility and
subsidy policies to meet the economic, work and education needs of families.
GOAL 3
Outreach initiatives should be designed and aggressively implemented to
assure that families have accessible and easy-to-understand information
on child care assistance and are provided assistance in applying.
GOAL 4
The child care application and redetermination processes should be uncomplicated
and family friendly.
GOAL 5
Establish a coordinated, seamless eligibility system so that funding sources
are invisible to families and support continuity of child care.
GOAL 6
Establish customer service outcome goals and set standards to ensure that
all families are treated with dignity and respect and are served in an
efficient manner.
GOAL 7
Design the subsidy system so that rate structures assure that families
receiving child care assistance have access to all types of child care
and disallow charges above established co-payments.
GOAL 8
Create partnerships with employers to expand child care assistance for
working families.
GOAL 9
Provide child care assistance to working families through federal and state
tax laws.
GOAL 10
States should have effective, coordinated systems to guide child care and
early childhood policy decisions and direct use of resources.
It is now my pleasure
to introduce three members of the Task Force
who will make brief remarks on initiatives
in their states that represent progress toward
achievement of the Action Plan goals:
Secretary Joan Ohl,
from West Virginia, will speak to Goal 1,
which calls for full funding for all families
who need and seek child care assistance.
Carol Burnett, from
Mississippi, will speak to Goal 4, which
calls for simplification of the application
and redetermination processes.
Diane Rath, from Texas,
will speak to Goal 8, which urges states
to create partnerships with employers.
After these brief remarks,
DC Deputy Mayor Carolyn Graham will speak
to the importance of leadership in achieving
action on behalf of families needing child
care assistance.
We will then open for
questions from the press.
|
|
