Group Rips State Over Child Care Report Says Applicants Steered Away From Help

Community activists accused the state Health and Welfare Department on Wednesday of delaying, discouraging and preventing eligible low-income families from securing needed child-care assistance.

“This means that many lowincome parents can’t seek or maintain employment due to a lack of affordable child care, an expense that is often the second or third largest item in a low-income family’s budget,” according to the report released by the Idaho Community Action Network.

Department spokesman Bill Walker rejected the allegations. He declined to comment on specific examples in the report showing what the group said was departmental discrimination against minorities, failure to make all eligible families aware of the assistance and steering eligible applicants away from the subsidies.

While he admitted that there are eligible children who are not benefiting from the government subsidy, Walker said the department “really does have a very strong commitment to providing child care to low-income families.”

Amanda Corleone, an organizer with the community action network, said the group didn’t specifically examine any North Idaho branches of Health and Welfare for problems in the Panhandle.

But they do exist, she said.

“Considering the different offices we went to locally (in Boise) and the experiences of the people there, this looks to be a statewide issue,” Corleone said. “We have tested up north in the past.”

The Panhandle’s racial demographics would probably mean discrimination based on skin color isn’t as prevalent here. But whites in North Idaho have encountered barriers as well, Corleone said.

Walker said the charges of racism in the department are untrue, citing a recent report from the federal Health Care Financing Association of its program applications that concluded “we are treating clients fairly, all clients, regardless of what language they speak.”

Many of the specific allegations in the report were based on interviews with 25 parents. But the report also cited a study by the federal Administration for Children and Families that found only one of every six eligible children in Idaho was benefiting from the subsidized child-care program during mid-1998 as welfare reform was taking effect. That was about 6,500 out of some 40,000 eligible children.

That rate was slightly better than the country as a whole at that time, but Walker said that since then total participation in the subsidy program has exceeded 9,000 while the budget has nearly doubled to $21 million.

Legislative auditors, in fact, pointed out that during the 12 months through June 1998, the department failed to disburse $2.5 million in federal child-care subsidies because it failed to adequately monitor demand while keeping the subsidy too low.

Department officials acknowledged the problem in early 1998 but said the entire amount was allocated for child-care subsidies the following year and the department is diverting cash from other programs to meet this year’s anticipated $21 million bill.

While Walker said the state is aggressively promoting the program among eligible families, the community advocates argued that even more should be done.

They also called for simpler application forms, quicker department response to information requests, better access to department personnel, improved training for department staff and more translator services for limited-English speaking applicants.

Walker said many of those things have already been done and the department continues to look for ways to improve delivery of services to low-income families.

Staff writer Winston Ross contributed to this report.