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An additional $10 million available for child-care vouchers will make it easier for struggling Hoosier families. It’s an investment that will help improve the state’s poor record at moving families from welfare to work.
Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration announced this week that it will raise the income ceiling for child-care voucher eligibility from 141 percent of the federal poverty level to 170 percent. The change moves Indiana from its shameful 49th place ranking for poverty level served to an improved – but still disappointing – 30th place.
The so-called welfare reform measures adopted in 1996 tie financial assistance to education, job training or work. For many recipients, a job or school means they need child care. Block grant money in the Child Care Development Fund provides for vouchers, administered in this region through Community Action Network of Indiana, or CANI. To first qualify for vouchers, a family must not earn more than 127 percent of the federal poverty level – a figure that currently amounts to $2,165 a month for a family of four.
The initial eligibility figure presents a barrier to many working mothers who earn too much to qualify but too little to pay for child care on their own. But even those who qualify eventually face a Catch-22. The child-care voucher allows them to work, but after they begin working and earning a paycheck, they become ineligible to continue receiving the voucher that allows them to work in the first place.
The limit allows for income to increase, but the minor increase from 127 percent to 141 percent of the poverty level made too many parents ineligible too quickly. The new limit of 170 percent of the poverty level will help.
Trina Grayson, who cares for 16 children at Angelview Child Care Academy on Werling Drive, said the relaxed guidelines will help her families – most of whom depend on CANI vouchers.
“I have a parent who is a single mother who is going to school full time and working full time, so her child is in the care of someone else all day long,” Grayson said. “She said she may have to take her son out because she makes $3 more than they would allow.”
At Cultivating Wonders Montessori on Avondale Drive, Lisa Jones said the expanded income guidelines could help one of her mothers – a single parent who is working and studying nursing. “If she could have these vouchers just a little bit longer, she can make it,” Jones said.
Pam Brookshire, director of program operations at CANI, said the change should help families keep their support a bit longer.
“They will get a little more income under their feet,” she said. “The next step should be to adjust the rate at the other end.”
That would mean allowing families who earn more than 127 percent of the federal poverty guidelines to qualify.
If policymakers are sincere about helping low-income residents become self-sufficient, they must do more initially to help them. Providing housing, food, transportation, health care and child care is toughest for the lowest wage-earners. Making child care affordable is one way for the state to help parents land better jobs and earn more, allowing them to make it on their own.
