Testimony on:

Access to Quality Child Care

Presented Before:

New York State Senate Committee on Children and Families

Chair, Senator Tony Avella

State Assembly Committee on Children & Families

Chair, Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee

Assembly Legislative Taskforce on Women’s Issues

Chair, Assemblywoman Shelley Mayer

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Albany, NY

Testimony Presented by:

Joshua Terry

Legislative Director

Denise Dowell

Director, Early Learning and Care Programs

The Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) represents more than 10,000 registered, licensed group, and enrolled legally-exempt family child care providers in the 57 counties outside New York City.

For the last 10 years, we have worked with our members, the Office for Children and Family Services (OCFS) and local social services districts to improve regulations, inspections, and payment systems for home based providers while always focusing on increasing access to the families that need child care. For our members, we administer programs that make health insurance more affordable and accessible and expand access to professional development – including tuition assistance and Child Development Associate (CDA) credentials. The CSEA Bi-lingual Child Care Resource Center hosts hundreds of call from providers each month seeking assistance with all aspects of family child care. We deliver free training and technical assistance with the business operations of family child care to support our members to build and sustain quality programs in the challenging market in which they operate. With our national affiliate, AFSCME, we work to increase and sustain federal funding and improve programs like the Child and Adult Food Program (CACFP) that support working families and the child care providers serving them.

Family child care is the most flexible and affordable child care option for working families across New York. It is often the best and sometimes only option for parents needing flexible care in order to work a job that has non-traditional hoursor just-in-time scheduling. Many parents prefer the small group and home environment that family child care provides. Quality home-based child care programs nurture children to develop a trusting relationship with a consistent teacher and caregiver from birth through school-age – a key ingredient to success in kindergarten and beyond.

Demand for home based child care is increasing; however, the state’s child care assistance program is strained to the breaking point and is making it difficult for families to access care. The number of children served by the federal Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) reached an “all-time low” in 2015 (Stephanie Schmit, Hannah Matthews, CLASP CCDBG Fact Sheet, April 2017). OCFS Acting Commissioner Sheila Poole testified this year that fewer than 20% of eligible families actually receive a child care subsidy. For the 80% of eligible families that do not receive a subsidy, the cost of care outside the subsidy system is cost prohibitive. According to “Child Care in America: 2016 State Fact Sheets”, the average annual cost of infant care in New York State is $10,556 for a home-based child care program and $14,144 in a day care center. This is simply unaffordable for working families who struggle to get by.

Child care funding in New York has been essentially flat over the past several years. The 2017-18 state budget cut child care subsidies by $7 million and funding from the federal government is wholly inadequate. Due to these funding constraints, counties have reduced parent eligibility and increased co-payments, causing more families to be unable to access child care assistance.

When parents lose a child care subsidy, they generally have two options: give up gainful employment in order to qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or find alternative, oftentimes underground child care. Low-income families who lose child care subsidies and go back on TANF are guaranteed child care assistance. Due to this, the more families that are on temporary assistance will lead to a decrease in the number of low income working families that will be able to receive subsidies. The other option for parents who lose child care subsidies is a make-shift child care arrangement, often taking the form of underground, illegal care. Underground child care has no standards, staff to child ratios, or inspections and doesn’t give young children the continuity of better quality early learning and care they need to thrive. Underground child care puts the safety and healthy development of our youngest children at risk during the most important stages of brain development.

Neither of these options is preferable. However, the only way to properly address these issues is by making investments into the child care subsidy system that allows more working families to qualify for subsidies.

While the underfunding of the subsidy system limits access to parents, it also presents challenges to all child care providers. For example, while there is an unmet need for Infant/Toddler care, the current reimbursement rates are grossly inadequate and do not begin to cover the increased program operating cost to hire additional staff to meet appropriate lower staff to child ratios. In home-based child care programs with adult to child ratios of one adult to two children under the age of two, providers frequently limit enrollment to two because they cannot afford the increased operating cost of hiring additional staff. Due to these constraints, working parents find it very difficult to find a slot for an infant at a licensed facility. In response, they may stop working or place their child inillegal care in order to continue working.

Current reimbursement rates make it very difficult for providers to make a decent living and force many providers out of the business, making it even more difficult for parents to access licensed care. A report “Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Early Childhood Workforce 25 Years after the National Child Care Staffing Study” (Marcy Whitebook, Deborah Phillps, and Carollee Howes, 2014) found that child care workers’ wages grew by only one percent between 1997 and 2013, a smaller increase than that of fast food cooks and tellers.

Child care providers in all modalities struggle to sustain quality programs. Enrolling to capacity is essential to these small businesses that operate from payroll to payroll. With the expansion of Pre-K and Three-K across New York, programs can no longer rely on the enrollment of three and four year olds to help cover the very high cost to deliver Infant/Toddler care resulting from necessary and appropriate lower adult/child ratios. The increased minimum wage, which CSEA supports, substantially increases operating costs for Group Family and child care centers that are barely managing to stay afloat now. When programs close, they are hard to replace.

We are at a crossroads within the child care system. If we continue down the path we are currently on, more families will either lose subsidies or continue to not qualify, even if they are low income and in desperate need of assistance. The Taskforce proposed in A. 7726A and S. 5929A is a positive step to examine the current system to address the issues discussed today. CSEA welcomes that the proposed taskforce includes two home-based providers. However, we strongly urge you to include home-based child care providers that are members of employee organizations that represent these providers throughout New York. These individuals have a deep understanding to home-based child care in diverse communities across the state and would present a unique viewpoint on this taskforce.

In order to address many of the concerns discussed today, CSEA recommends that the state:

  • Make substantial financial investments in child care subsidies in order to sustain child care assistance for working families across the state. Without substantial additional funding for subsidies, thousands of families across New York will lose child care assistance on which they rely to look for and maintain jobs that support their families and for TANF recipients, to move toward self-sufficiency.
  • Develop new revenue streams to fund quality early childhood education and child care to expand access, affordability for parents and raise compensation to the workforce. New York can learn and draw from recent successful initiatives in cities across the country to develop and roll-out a state early learning and care revenue strategy.
  • Invest in the incumbent child care workforce to sustain and promote diversity in the field and fill a growing unmet need for credentialed early childhood educators. Provide low cost opportunities for child care practitioners to attain early childhood education credentials and degrees and pursue career opportunities.
  • Financially assist child care programs through the roll-out of new minimum wage requirements and increased cost of Workers Compensation Insurance.
  • Allocate the newly required CCDBG Infant/Toddler set-aside to substantially increasing the Infant/Toddler rate differential for programs meeting professional development and/or quality standards.
  • Continue to seek waivers and exemptions to new federal laws and regulations until the federal government funds these new requirements.

We look forward to working with you to increase funding in order to expand access to safe and affordable child care for working families.

Thank you.

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