NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Mayor Eric Adams' MyCity portal has seen an increase in demand but it has also led to longer wait times for child care services, city officials shared during a City Council hearing on Thursday.
The average wait time went up from under 30 days to now an average of 35 days, according to the data presented at the hearing.
“That’s been a little bit of an increased wait time because of the volume of applications that are coming in through MyCity,” Michelle Paige, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education, shared with the Council’s Women and Gender Equity Committee.
The online portal combines paper forms into a single user-friendly application. Within the first month of the program, “over 4,011 [people registered] online,” Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser told amNY.
The app has now assisted more than 16,700 families in applying for child care since it launched six months ago.
The online portal aimed to allow New Yorkers to “online, easily search, apply for, and track city services and benefits right from their smartphones or computers — and we’re starting by spotlighting child care,” Mayor Adams had announced in a press conference about the portal in March.
The effort to streamline city services seems to have greater demand than expected as the wait time continues to increase.
Council members questioned how the city would tackle the lagging wait time with the newly announced budget cuts due to the influx of migrants in the city.
“I would imagine that increasing staffing to reduce wait times would be difficult if your agencies were facing 15%,” Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán, chair of the Women and Gender Equity Committee, said.
Paige remained optimistic about the progress they have made. The Mayor's Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education has cleared a waitlist that allows 35,000 families to apply for vouchers.
They maintain that they are on track to fulfill three-quarters of the 21 strategies outlined in Adams' blueprint for child care and early childhood education, Paige explained.