All I want for Christmas is for Gov. Hochul to sign the decoupling bill. During her State of the State, Hochul “announced a sweeping plan to make New York’s child care system fairer, more affordable, and easier to access.” In New York, in order for parents to access publicly funded child care, they have to prove that they are working the hours that the child is in care.
If their hours of work change, so too do the hours that they are eligible for child care. Parents are only able to get public support for child care for the hours that they are working and a few minutes for transportation. They cannot use child care to go to the doctor for regular checkups or when they are ill and in some counties, lose child care with unemployment.
This presents huge problems for parents who work in the gig economy and those who do shift work such as restaurant workers, home care workers, nurses, and others. It also creates problems for parents who are students and need to complete work outside of their classes (e.g. assigned homework). There is a bill on Hochul’s desk that could change this.
If you don’t have a 9-5 job, it is difficult to get access to publicly funded care in New York even if you are technically eligible. According to Hochul, fewer than 10% of technically eligible families are actually able to access the funding.
With the help of statewide child care advocates, and Assembly Member Andrew Hevesi and state Sen. Jabari Brisport, the Legislature passed a bill to decouple child care from working hours. This bill was signed by the governor last year but because of an error in the drafting process, the measure was limited to supporting only locally funded child care. There is no solely locally funded child care in New York.
This year, the Assembly and Senate were once again able to pass the decoupling bill, again with bipartisan support, but without the error. Yet, Gov. Hochul has yet to sign it.
In New York, child care costs on average $10,000-$25,000 a year per child. Single parents spend about 55% of their income on child care. For this reason, national and state policy provides low and moderate income parents with access, which for many is only theoretical, to publicly subsidized child care.
Hochul approved landmark legislation that increased the income that one must have to be eligible for child care assistance to 85% of the state median income. She already signed a version of the decoupling bill, but given the error in the last version, it was useless. By signing the current, revised, decoupling bill, she could increase access to child care that families so desperately need and that she claimed she wanted to help with.
The decoupling bill would enable kids to receive stable child care even if their parents work hours shifted. It would enable parents to know that their work hours do not affect their children’s care. It would also provide needed stability for many low and moderate income children. Stable child care has been associated with developmentally appropriate behavior, prosocial behavior and with children developing emotional security which is a predictor of future mental health.
A plethora of research has found that it is actually cheaper to pay the upfront costs for quality child care than the costs to society for children who do not receive it. Since we know that high quality care helps children, particularly low income children, and we know that New York has many bureaucratic hurdles that prevent families from accessing it, why is the governor hesitating to sign a bill that will end these hurdles for parents and make child care more accessible? The obvious answer may be that it costs money.
As with many policies in the United States, we make short term financial decisions that carry long term costs. Do we want to raise children in stable supportive environments when their parents work in shifts or allow children to be raised without needed stability and incur the societal costs of greater welfare dependence, less high school graduation, more mental health problems and a greater likelihood of incarceration?
The governor has claimed to support universal child care as well as making care more affordable and accessible. She has increased the limit of who is eligible for publicly subsidized care but she seems to be hesitating to sign this bill that would make care more accessible to many. If Hochul truly supports making child care more affordable and accessible, she will sign the decoupling bill now.
Palley is professor and director of the doctoral program at the Adelphi University School of Social Work.
from New York Daily News https://ift.tt/lrFtRQE