Childcare advocates in New Hampshire are striving to make the states’ childcare scholarship program more accessible.
Critical aspects include creating a more stable state funding stream to support future investments, expanding training stipends and increasing money for retention and retirement.
However, these needs will likely be hard to obtain in the next state budget because lawmakers will no longer have millions in federal pandemic aid or revenue, as the income and dividends tax expire soon.
According to an NHPR article, Airole Warden, project manager for the Coos County Director Network and part of the Coos Coalition for Young Children and Families, stated, “True priorities shine brightest during challenging times, and this is definitely a moment for New Hampshire to reaffirm its commitment to child care.”
Subsidies are now available to higher-income families, making the program more generous than ever. Parents must be citizens, working, looking for work or in a training program, and children must be under 13; 18 if the child has a disability.
Out of the 55,000 children eligible, only 4,348 are enrolled, according to Karen Hebert from the state Division of Economic Stability. This is an issue. Far fewer people are enrolled than are eligible despite the department stepping up promotion of the scholarship program, according to Hebert.
Jackie Cowell, executive director of Early Learning N.H., stated, “Some families will save $25,000 a year for their two kids. That’s a mortgage payment.”
A reason for this lack of enrollment could be because of the complexity of the application process, which requires several financial documents and takes approximately 45 minutes to complete.
Kitty Larochelle, director of The Growing Years daycare center in Manchester, voiced frustrations with helping parents through the process. 26 of her students use the scholarship, and taking roll call attendance takes 35 clicks per child every morning. This is no easy feat for an already busy director.
Additionally, Larochelle says that eligibility determinations are taking weeks, requiring families to either pay the full cost or for Larochelle herself to cover the cost, hoping she gets reimbursed by the state.
“I think everybody thinks the pandemic is over and what was going on with child care is solved,” Larochelle said. “We’ve kind of lost the messaging of us being the workforce behind the workforce.”
Ongoing state investment will likely be required when addressing gaps in New Hampshire’s childcare system.
This is an important topic to invest in and there should be more outreach to families with this scholarship program. The childcare and education system in our country, let alone the state of New Hampshire, is in an extremely fragile place.
During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, many CCEE (Child Care and Early Education) programs were forced to close down, requiring families to find alternative childcare needs if they still had to work. This could be more expensive because demand for childcare was so high, but supply was so low. Some families are still struggling financially from COVID and this scholarship program would help them greatly.
However, there does not seem to be much outreach about the scholarship program. At a recent business event attended by Cowell, where she handed out approximately 50 brochures about the program, not one person had heard about it.
According to Cowell, all employers should tell workers about the program as part of their onboarding for new hires.
This outreach would help parents become aware of the options available for their children and would be one step closer to the success of the childcare system in N.H.
Jaden Johnson can be contacted at
jaden@kscequinox.com
