In D.C., parents miss work, lose jobs trying to get child-care subsidy

By Guest Contributor, on May 19th, 2013

Cross-Posted from the Washington Post written by Brigid Schulte

At 6:30 a.m. on a Wednesday early this month, Andria Swanson, dressed in a bright-pink terry cloth jumpsuit, joined a line that was already snaking down South Capitol Street in Congress Heights.

She nervously counted the people ahead of her.

“I’m number 19,” she said. “That means I’ll get in today.” At number 20, she said, caseworkers close the doors and tell you to come back another day.

Ahead of her in line, Joelle Flythe had been waiting, for the third day in a row, since 5 a.m. The first person in line had arrived at 3:45 a.m.

This was Swanson’s second trip of the week to the Congress Heights Service Center, the only place run by the city where poor and working-poor parents can apply for a subsidy to help pay for child care.

It will not be her last.

Over the past two years, Swanson said, she has repeatedly waited in line at this office, once for more than nine hours as she missed work and college classes. She’s made multiple trips after caseworkers told her she needed more paperwork. At one point, she said, she missed so much work trying to get the child-care subsidy that she lost her job, landed in a shelter and went on welfare.

Last month, Swanson began a job for the grass-roots advocacy nonprofit group Empower DC, tasked with helping improve the very subsidy process she has found so frustrating. So on this particular morning, she asked another mother to hold her place in line while she interviewed people about their experiences and asked them to sign a petition to improve the system.

“This process is hell,” Swanson said. “H-E-L-L.”

It’s never been easy for low-income parents in the District to secure high-quality child care. But now the stakes are very high.

This fall, the District will begin limiting how long families can stay on welfare to five years. Liberals and conservatives agree that affordable child care is essential in moving people off welfare and into jobs and in helping them keep those jobs.

But that goal is greatly complicated by the realities of the city’s child-care subsidy program — with its counterproductive system for receiving and renewing benefits, its inadequate funding for the subsidies themselves and the lack of child-care centers willing to accept the vouchers.

City officials agree that the system is flawed. “The process needs a lot of fixing,” said David Berns, director of the Department of Human Services.

As many as 25,000 people apply for child-care subsidies every year, he said, but the city has only seven caseworkers to determine eligibility.

Berns said he has successfully lobbied for funding from the Division of Early Learning to increase staff at the Congress Heights Service Center by seven or eight. His department also hopes to begin streamlining the subsidy process next fall, he said. And in two years, he said, a new computer system should enable parents to apply for subsidies online.

“We have a real sense of urgency,” said Deborah Carroll, director of DHS’s Economic Security Administration. “You can’t get a job if you can’t put your kid in child care.

CLICK HERE to read the entire article at the WashingtonPost.com.

I’ve reposted the comments that followed the above Washington Post article because they represent the kind of mentality that helps keep DC Government from fully funding the subsidized child care program. I hope they are not representative of all Washington Post readers. They’re actually difficult to find (I had to click on the photo gallery to get to them) which may explain why only seven people commented. I’m just using the abbreviations for those posters who used their real names.

Baby Huey in the City wrote: STOP having babies, if you CAN’T take care of them! It’s that simple

ABS wrote: She just stuck her foot in her mouth… How can she receive Unemployment, is currently employed, has an employed fiance AND receive public assistance–AND STILL COMPLAINING? Hummm….

cr1957ny wrote: I still do not understand how someone who is 22 or 23 years old and doesn’t have a pot to go in has 2-3 kids already. It just seems really irresponsible, and why should others have to support that irresponsibility? If you don’t have a job that pays well enough to support a child, stop having them! Get married. I mean, really. I feel bad for the kids, but this constant subculture thing about popping babies out with . . . → Read More: In D.C., parents miss work, lose jobs trying to get child-care subsidy

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IVY CITY WINS!!!

By Guest Contributor, on December 11th, 2012

Cross-posted from DC’s Independent Media Center Written by Luke On the 10th of December, Judge Judith Macaluso ruled for the plaintiffs in Vaughn Bennett, et al v. Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, et al. The motion for a preliminary injunction to stop construction was GRANTED, Empower DC held a victory party later that evening. From Empower DC’s email announcement: JUDGE GRANTS IVY CITY MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION AGAINST CHARTER BUS PARKING LOT Today, Judge Judith Macaluso ruled in favor of the Plaintiffs in the case case of Vaughn Bennett, et al v. Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, et al. The court docket entry states:

“It is ORDERED, that the “Motion for a Preliminary Injunction,” filed by Plaintiffs Vaughn Bennett, Andria Swanson, and Jeanette Carter on July 26, 2012, is GRANTED. It is further ORDERED, that Defendants Union Station Redevelopment Corporation and Mayor Vincent C. Gray are ENJOINED from operating a diesel bus parking facility on the grounds of the Crummell School until (a) procedures established by D.C. Code § 1-309.10 are complied with and (b) USRC submits an accurate Environmental Intake Form and Environmental Impact Screening Form to the District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, and complies with any requirements that result from evaluation of those submittals. It is further ORDERED, that this injunction shall not restrain Defendants from completing construction or, or maintaining, the lot and appurtenant facilities. It is further ORDERED, that this injunction shall not be lifted except by further order of the court.”

The order likely means that construction of the charter bus parking lot on Gallaudet Street NE in Ivy City will have to stop until the court lifts the injunction or the District of Columbia and the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation comply with the judges order.

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Ivy City, tired of being a D.C. “dumping ground”…

By Guest Contributor, on August 20th, 2012

…takes on Gray over bus depot Written by Darryl Fears, cross-posted from the Washington Post

(Jared Soares/ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ) – Ivy City resident Andria Swanson near the grounds of the closed Alexander Crummell School.

On any scale, Ivy City is a 98-pound weakling among District neighborhoods. It measures only 1.7 square miles near the Maryland border in Northeast and has some of the city’s poorest residents, with an unemployment rate approaching 50 percent.

But that has not stopped the D.C. government from placing a heavy burden on Ivy City’s scrawny shoulders, making it a base of operations for large projects other neighborhoods shun, “a dumping ground,” residents say.

Ivy City is dotted with parking lots for scores of government vehicles — quarter-ton snowplows, salt trucks, parking-enforcement vehicles and school buses that belch exhaust as they rumble through the streets. Recently, when Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) announced a plan to build a bus depot for 65 D.C-to-New York motorcoaches in the heart of Ivy City, residents said “enough” and filed a lawsuit to stop it.

There is a lot at stake in the showdown between one of the city’s smallest neighborhoods and the mayor. Bus travel is a major boon for the city; ridership rose from nearly 2 million in 1999 to nearly 7 million in 2009, according to the District Department of Transportation’s 2011 Motorcoach Action Plan.

[Only a portion of the above article is posted here. For the complete article go to Ivy City, tired of being a D.C. “dumping ground,” takes on Gray over bus depot.]

 

 

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The Empower DC Community Hour

By Liane Scott, on February 23rd, 2012

We Act Radio store front in Anacostia.

Hello all you folks out there in radio land. Empower DC’s Grassroots Media Project has just started producing an hour long program on We Act Radio 1480 AM airing out of Anacostia. The show which we’re calling The Empower DC Community Hour is part of We Act Radio’s Live Wire series. It airs live on Monday nights at 7:00 PM but you can also listen to it at WeActRadio.com as well as right here, where we’ll be archiving the program along with all the other work of the Media Project. Our first show aired February 20, 2012. Empower DC’s Youth Organizer Jonathan Stith and Ivy City Community Organizer Andria Swanson co-hosted the program. Their guests, Empower DC Education Organizer Daniel del Pielago and Bruce Monroe Parent Sequnely Gray, spent the hour focusing on the impending school closings and the implications of the Illinois Facility Fund report. Besides learning about what to expect should your family’s school be closed or to turned over to a charter management company, the show also suggests how you can get organized along with other members of your community before that happens. No one should have to face a school closure alone. As Jonathan Stith says on the show, “get organized because we’ve got your back.”

The Empower DC Community Hour for February 20, 2012

Please listen in and support the program.

 

 

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