By Maria Polletta | Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
Arizona will reinstate a waitlist for families seeking state child care assistance, the Department of Economic Security announced Wednesday—less than 24 hours before implementing the measure.
The move will not affect families already receiving state aid unless they submit renewal documents late, according to the agency. But new applicants, with the exception of those the state cannot legally turn away, will be locked out of the subsidy program indefinitely.
AZCIR and others had pressed DES officials for weeks about a possible return of a waitlist, after state lawmakers in June failed to fill a multimillion-dollar budget hole left by expiring federal pandemic funds.
The department did not inform child care operators, advocates and others until Wednesday afternoon, around the time it uploaded a FAQ for families to its website.
“My phone has been ringing off the hook,” Barbie Prinster, program manager for the Arizona Early Childhood Education Association, told AZCIR a few hours after the DES notification went out.
“Giving one day’s notice is just really, really tough—not only for providers but for families, too,” she said.
Arizona’s subsidy program was designed to help families in need cover the steep cost of child care—which can top $12,000 for toddlers and $14,000 for infants—while they work, go to school, participate in training programs or look for a job. Those eligible to apply include working low-income parents, teen parents in school and parents living in shelters, among others.
State and federal rules do protect some applicants from being affected by waitlists, such as parents receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and children in Department of Child Safety care. But other families will be out of luck ”until the DES child care assistance caseload drops significantly or the program receives more funding,” according to the agency.
Arizona last implemented a waitlist for child care aid during the Great Recession, after lawmakers slashed state subsidy dollars to help balance the budget. It remained in effect for about a decade, until 2019.
Even after eliminating the waitlist, state leaders continued relying on federal money to prop up the child care system, most recently aided by a $1.3 billion infusion of federal funding during the pandemic. With the last of those recovery funds scheduled to sunset this year, legislators cobbled together a portion of what was needed to replace them—but not all of it.
The shortfall came despite a blunt warning from DES about the “dire impact” of inadequate funding late last year. In the agency’s departmental budget request, officials cautioned that a waitlist could result in an average of 5,200 fewer children being served per month.
That, in turn, could lead to “productivity losses and foregone revenue as parents have to take time off work or leave the workforce altogether,” as well as repercussions for “the health, safety and well-being of Arizona’s children,” they wrote.
Prinster, the longtime child care advocate, raised similar concerns—particularly given the practically nonexistent timeline for notifying families. Parents who may have been considering applying in the coming weeks without knowing the waitlist was coming have now lost their chance, she said.
“A single mom or single dad or a very low-income family is not going to be able to go to work now because they can’t get child care, or they’re going to have to put their kids in unsafe situations,” Prinster said.
“It’s just a really hard spot.”
This article first appeared on Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
