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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