BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) – Despite billions in federal and state relief allocated for the child care industry, advocates say they've haven't been able to take advantage of it and are hoping Albany lawmakers can expedite the relief before the end of the legislative session on Thursday.
Child care centers in New York were allocated $164.6 million in emergency relief at the beginning of the pandemic.
"Unfortunately, that money did not make it into the hands of providers and families in a timely manner," Beth Starks, Founder & Executive Director of the Chautauqua Lake Child Care Center and member of Governor Cuomo's Child Care Availability Task Force, said. "A year later, only $40 million out of the $164 million had actually made it into the hands of families and child care providers."
Additional federal relief will give same child care providers in the state approximately $2.4 billion, which Starks said will transform the child care infrastructure, but she said the same issues persist.
"I think it's complicated," she said about why she believes the state has been slow to give out the money. "There are so many needs in the child care industry that there were difficulties in knowing how to spend the money and get it in the hands of providers. There were a lot of restrictions on the funding and I think our state wanted to be careful on how they were spending the money."
That red tape, Starks said, made it difficult for them to access to funding. She hopes that Albany can pass a package of bills that will help expand the state's child care task force and to help the money go to the providers immediately.
The bills are:
Decoupling child care subsidies from parents' hours of work
Expanding the child care availability task force
Remove work requirement for student parents receiving child care subsidies
Child care pay rate differential
"I would love to say that things are back to normal but child care was in a crisis pre-pandemic and now it is worse than it was, unfortunately," Starks said. "We live in a child care desert meaning we don't have enough child care to meet the need of the families that live in our area.
We have a lot of families that lack the ability to pay for child care."
Starks said one of the biggest challenges facing the industry currently is the lack of a workforce. She said some places had to close simply because they didn't have the employees.
"I risk someone maybe taking a job at the fast food industry down the street because they can make more money and make a nice sign-on bonus and I can't provide that right now," she said. "It's really unfortunate because we have this crisis and it's getting worse and it's getting complicated to fix it. The good news is we have the blueprint already."
