Child Care

My second reaction essay will be discussing an article on child care. This article is called “Child Care,” by Michelle Friedman, from the Coalition on Human Needs. I chose this topic and article because I work at a home childcare and preschool here in Springfield. While the need for childcare is rising, so is the cost of childcare. I feel that many people do not think of childcare as a social service issue, but it is. There are many programs and funding that the federal government operates in order to provide better child care services and affordable child care service. It is important to advocate for these services in order to help families all over the United States of America.

This article starts out discussing the growing need for child care. There are a few factors that influence this progression. The number of women working (participating in the paid labor force) is increasing as the years progress. Many women are going to work in order to help support the family. As the cost of things is increasing, the pay for people is staying the same. Families now need a second income. As this need for women to work increases, the need for good-quality childcare is also increasing. This article states that, unfortunately, the amount of good-quality childcare is not increasing. Every week, there are about 5 million children left unsupervised after school (Friedman). This leads to more crime and juvenile delinquency. While many families have relatives available to help with childcare, there is still a huge number of people that have to pay for childcare outside of the home. The costs for childcare can range from about $4,000 dollars to $10,000 dollars per year, per child (Friedman).

This article also talks about the quality of care for children. I like how this article mentions the importance of the quality of care effecting the child’s development. It is so important that children have interaction, safety, connections, and are being taught skills and responsibility and are engaged in learning. The child care should be more than just “babysitting.” There are many health and safety issues that children need to have as well. In this article it states that “a healthy and safe early childhood setting can also prevent cognitive and behavioral disorders later in life, some of which are irreversible” (Friedman). I feel that this is very important-helping prevent mental illness. This article mentions some statistics on the amount of child care providers that provide inadequate care. So many states have so many different rules and regulations that it is hard to ensure that each child care provider is truly an adequate provider. Of course, programs like DCFS do check-ups to ensure safety, but there are always some that get through the cracks or have second chances.

There are government programs that help with improving child care affordability and quality. There is a Child Care Development Block Grant that was passed in 1990. It became part of funding for families that receive welfare as part of the 1996 welfare law. It provides funding for early childhood development and before-and after-school child care services. There is a program called Head Start. It was created in 1965, and helps prepare low-income children to enter school. In 1996, this program served over 800,000 children (Friedman). In Springfield, I know there is a place called Community Child Care Connection. They link parents and providers to resources in the community. This is part of the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and is funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services. They have a child care assistance program. It is run through IDHS. It provides assistance to low-income working families and families on TANF. At my childcare home that I work at, there is only one family in this program. I feel relieved for these people that they have this program available to them.

The quality of childcare is decreasing in some areas in the United States, as the cost may be rising in some areas of the U.S. I think it is important for social workers to strive for better programs for child care assistance and to keep up with the policies that are in existence now for child care.

References

Friedman, M. (n.d.). Child Care. Almanac of Policy Issues. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/childcare.shtml

Student considers parental stresses related to autism

The story of Katherine McCarron, the three year old child who was smothered to death by her own mother, was very sad, and is one of the readings that stood out to me the most this semester. I had never heard of this case before, so it was new information to me. I did a little more research on the topic, just reading a little more into the story. I was shocked to learn that her mother was a physician. 

I found a website titled “Action for Autism”  with some more information about Katherine McCarron. Some newspapers actually reported that this murder was done to put her out of pain. It seems like a lot of people are misinformed about autism. It is not a disorder that causes pain. It has more to do with the way people socially interact.

One part of the article states: “one mother—with her autistic daughter within earshot—mentioned that she once thought of driving her and her daughter off the George Washington Bridge.” When I read this portion, I just thought it was absolutely horrible. What kind of person could think that, let alone talk about it with their child listening?

However, something changed my mind.

After reading the article, I was browsing through the comments that people were leaving. One stood out to me and really gave me a different point of view. “I am not condoning murder….I am defending the mother who had the courage to admit her desire to drive off the Washington bridge. We need to listen to these cries for help as a society and work on creating greater and more accessible support systems for families with autistic children.” I still think the idea of driving off of the Washington Bridge is pretty extreme, but this commenter had an excellent point. Clearly there is a need for more support for not just autistic people, but for their parents as well. It makes sense, the parents are their sole care providers. They need resources and information that are accessible so that they do not feel alone or overwhelmed. It seems like many of the other people who commented related to this story at least a little bit. One mother that commented claimed to feel unsupported, exhausted, and depressed. Taking care of any child is time consuming and stressful. A special needs child could be more stressful on the parents and family.

I think that this just shows the importance of the few supportive organizations for parents of autistic (or any other special needs) children. 

Here is my reaction, in a purple font.

Children with significant autistic symptoms and associated social impairments are not like the rest of us. They share with persons who have anti-social personality disorder a difficulty feeling empathy or understanding the reality that other people exist as something other than objects, things, tools, means toward the gratification of desires. Unlike persons with anti-social personality disorder, persons with serious autistic disorder  don’t try to deceive (in fact, persons with autism can be the most honest humans, as they sometimes do not understand the concept of deception, lies, or such things). Much of human morality seems to be related to wanting to be perceived as a good person, and persons with significant autism symptoms don’t usually care how others perceive them, or they are unaware that other people can even have conceptions or perceptions of them.  That just isn’t part of the mental world for them. 

Thus, it can sometimes seem that persons with autistic disorder are entirely a-moral.  When they are in the grip of strong negative (hostile) emotions, they can be moved to murderous rage, and they may not be able to constrain acts of violence, or their control of violent impulses may be rooted only in fear of consequences, and not in any empathetic sense of sympathy for the person with whom they are angry.

Since the children with this disorder live in a mental and emotional world so alien to normal human thinking (and morality), they can be perceived as being entirely wicked, and in exasperation, it would be easy for people to become utterly and murderously frustrated and able to contemplate murdering such children, even if they were their own children. It is probably good for people to recognize this and talk about it, because by recognizing their dark feelings and desires they will be able to deal with them and control them.  If they deny such feelings, or pretend that those feelings aren’t there, it may be harder to control them, or they may start to feel tremendous guilt (and resulting sadness or depression). 

That’s my understanding of it all.

Student thinks some parents use crisis nursery too much

I am commenting on the discussion we had on child welfare as it relates to the issue of whether or not the government should limit the amount of children a woman should have.  When I first thought about this during our class discussion, I thought to myself that letting the government decide how many children people can have is infringing too much on people’s rights as American citizens.  I mean, that is why people come here from other countries so that they can live the “American dream” and have the things they want and live the life they want.  So why would the government start making people limit the number of children they have?

Then I began to think about the children that I work with at the Mini O’ Beirne Crisis Nursery.  Although most children are there because their parent(s) are experiencing some type of crisis, there are many cases where parents send their children to the nursery because they just “don’t feel like dealing with them”.  When we have cases like that the parent is usually a young, single mother that has one or more children and no help. In such cases I can understand that it can be difficult, but the thing is, the children belong to the mother and are the mother’s responsibility.  It used to be that parents took care of their children, no matter what.  There were no “stress breaks” for parents.  If the mother needed a break, she either left the child with another family member or the father looked after the child(ren) while she went somewhere and relaxed.  Now that women are either single mothers or divorcees things have changed.

I said all of that to simply say this, although I do not think the government should regulate how many children women have, I do think that the single mothers that are having a hard time taking care of the children they have and who feel that they need “stress breaks” because they don’t know how to handle their children (because children will be children, regardless), should stop having more children if they cannot handle the ones they have.  Or, they should learn how to parent the ones they have so that if they do plan to have more they will know how to care for them.  Crisis nursery staff should not have to raise other people’s children; the children deserve to be with the most important people in their little lives, their parents.

Some of my comments on my student's paper follow in this purple font:

I wonder if you have considered that in our natural human environments (before modernity, and certainly before the invention of agriculture) we tended to live in bands of 20-200 closely related life-long friends and family members, and child-rearing was a shared duty, with parents taking primary responsibilities, but with significant assistance from aunts, uncles, old friends, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and so forth.  That’s changed now, and we do not live in clans, roaming over the land hunting and gathering. But that’s what our minds are best suited to doing, and as adaptable as we are, it’s difficult for some of us to adjust to modern life. 

Then there is another point. You’ve written this essay to make a point that is easy to make and entirely uncontroversial. Should single parents who are having significant trouble with their parenting duties have more children?  No.  Should they stop having sex? Traditional morality says if they are single they should practice chastity. If they are having sex, should they practice contraception or perhaps get abortions or put up children for adoption? Traditionally these would have been acceptable solutions in some circumstances. 

But, what is the policy you can suggest to address this situation?  Should the crisis nursery refuse to serve parents who have given birth to a second child out-of-wedlock when they were already having trouble with a first child?  No, you wouldn’t suggest that, and of course you wouldn’t want that.  Maybe you would just like persons who deliver social welfare services including crisis nursery services to be able to influence parents to control their fertility if they are having trouble rearing their children.  I’m a person who is concerned about overpopulation, and so I always endorse policies that encourage everyone to limit their fertility, so I won’t argue with you about that. Perhaps you are merely saying that some clients who use crisis nursery services are relying too much on those services, and using them for reasons that are too trivial. That is, the crisis nursery is a place where parents can bring their children so that they (the parents) can have a break and reduce their stresses, and this may help prevent child maltreatment, or improve parenting skills by those parents.  But, the service is not designed to be a babysitting service for lazy parents who want lots of breaks when they are in fact not having much stress.  Nor is it supposed to be used by parents to enable them to avoid learning how to practice good parenting.  That is, parents who want to deal with problems by turning to others to help them out instead of learning how to solve their own problems (with child rearing, discipline, stresses, etc.) should be encouraged to become more self-reliant, and crisis nursery services should not enable such parents to continue being helpless and needy in their parenting styles.

Grandparents Acting As Parents

Here is a student paper offered without any commentary by me. 

Since 1980, the number of children living with and being cared for by their grandparents has been increasing. “Based on the 1996 Census data, 4 million (6%) were living in grandparent(s)’s home. Over one-third of these children, or 1.4 million, were being raised solely by their grandparents, without the presence of either parent”. (www.ueex.ed/ces/gprg/article.html.)

The reasons for grandparents acting as parents vary. Some of the reasons are: divorce, substance abuse, child abuse and/or neglect, abandonment, teenage pregnancy, death, HIV/AIDS, unemployment, incarceration and mental health problems. Each and every one of the above listed reasons is an ongoing social problem and interrelates to numerous other social problems. For instance, divorce, teenage pregnancy. Divorce for a couple with children, many times results in the woman having custody of the children (or teenager pregnancy) with little or no child support, which then leads to poverty, no insurance, possible homelessness and to social welfare programs (more specifically TANF). Mental Health and substance abuse many times leads to unemployment. Unemployment leads to poverty and possible homelessness.

The welfare services available, in the past, to assist these grandparents were the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and foster care stipends. The Personal responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was passed 1996 by the United State Congress. It replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. According to AARP (1997), these new programs are different from the AFDC. (www.ueex.ed/ces/gprg/article.html.) Some of the requirements do not apply to the grandparents. Such as, the Work Requirements. Many of the grandparents, depending on age are already working, but do not make enough to support a family any longer. Or the grandparent(s) are retired and on a fixed income. There are legal custody requirements in some states. Not all of the grandparents caring for their grandchildren are the legal custodial parents. Although some of the requirements can be waived through the use of “child only” grants states are not required to continue to offer these grants under TANF, some still do.

Some states refuse foster care financial assistance for children placed with relatives, which can be a huge financial burden as well as placing the grandparent(s) and child(ren) at a poverty level or maybe just above it. Welfare reforms can affect an already precarious existence for these families.

The effects on the children in the homes of grandparents have not yet been ascertained as beneficial or not. Studies are still being conducted.

Regardless of the reason(s) for this trend in grandparents raising grandchildren, we should all be concerned with the social ills creating these circumstances, because we are all affected by it.

Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit

Here is a little policy exercise one of my students gave me, along with some of my reaction to her assignment.

The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides too little relief to families that struggle to afford child care expenses. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit for their child care expenses.

The goal is to provide more relief for families who are struggling to afford child care expenses. I believe we should be helping families who are low income and families who have more than two children. Many families who are just above the poverty line struggle just as much as low income families. I believe we should broaden the amount of families supported. The children should not suffer due to their parent’s income. Every child should have the same opportunities to succeed in life. Proposing a lower percent credit on child care expenses for families who make more would be justifiable. Families who make below the poverty level should be allowed a 50 percent credit. Families who make just above poverty level should receive 25 percent credit for their child care expenses.

I wrote this suggestion thinking to help more than just the “low income” families. Many families struggle although they are not below the poverty level. Children are expensive any way you look at it. More families are struggling above the poverty line and need assistance. A small amount of aid would be extremely beneficial to assist families with child care expenses.

Well said. There are a few issues related to this policy suggestion I should consider here. First of all, how much should it cost to provide quality day care to children? Secondly, how much is a fair subsidy to make day care affordable, and how much should people of various incomes end up paying for day care after the subsidy is calculated?

Given the fact that we want highly skilled and responsible persons to work with young children and infants, and given the fact that we want a low ratio of children to caregivers in daycare or child care establishments, there must be some minimum amount that child care actually costs. For example, if we want to pay 80% of the median year-round full-time income (which would be 80% of $48,680, or about $38,950 in 2009) to a child care worker, and provide the child care worker with health insurance and a pension plan, which might add $6,000 a year to the salary, for a total cost of $44,950, we can see that we’ll have about $45,000 in labor costs for each skilled worker. Each worker might have an assistant earning the same benefits with a much lower salary (say, $28,950), costing perhaps $35,000 per assistant. Then, you would need materials, and a rent or mortgage on a place, and utilities for light and heat and so forth. You need to figure what all this would cost, and then divide by the number of children who might be served. Assuming every professional can have two assistants, and the three day care workers together can handle care for 30 children at a time… well, it looks like day care is going to cost about $4,500 per child per year, or $5,400 if you go with a ratio of 8 children to each adult caregiver instead of 10-to-1. That’s thousands of dollars less expensive than the average state is spending on elementary education, but it’s still a pretty high cost.

Is daycare something that ought to be free the way public education is from kindergarten (or first grade) through the end of secondary school? I think many people still assume one parent might be staying at home with children who are under 6 years-old, and the loss of earnings given over to domestic child-rearing in the first four or five years of parenthood is considered a reasonable cost to many people. And yet, there is also now a fairly common idea that if the parents aren’t living together it’s better for the single parent with custody of the children to work and earn an income rather than stay at home and receive a pension. And that idea carries over to all classes, so that even in married couple families many people think having both parents work is just as normal as having one parent stay at home to rear the children full time.

Let’s imagine a family that is significantly above the poverty level, say a family of four with one income-earner bringing in 150% of the four-person family poverty threshold (which would be $33,075 in 2009), and this family has two children who are aged 2 and 4, plus a school-aged child who attends elementary school. Without government support the family would be paying perhaps $10,800 for high quality daycare, or maybe just $9,000 for basic day care (with two children getting full-time day care). That would be tough. The family would have a gross monthly income of $2,756 with daycare costs of $900 (about $21 per day per child). Such a family really could benefit from some government support to reduce the cost burden of daycare.

I’d probably arrange day care assistance along some sort of sliding scale, so that the government would pay up to $4,400 per child (for a household with no income), And then for every dollar earned there would be a 9¢ reduction in the day care subsidy, so that a family earning $10,000 would receive up to $3,500 per child in day care subsides or allowances, a family earning $22,050 (100% of poverty) would get up to $2,415.50 per child for day care, a family earning $33,075 (our example, at 150% of poverty) would get $1,423.25 per child, and even a family earning $48,000 would still get $80 per child for the day care subsidy (hey, my family would qualify!). For our example family earning $2,756 per month this means a subsidy of $237 per month, which reduces the cost from $900 per month for day care down to $663 per month (for two children).

It seems to me when you think of benefits this way, starting with some maximum benefit level that would help a family with no income pay just about the full amount for basic childcare (or basic food, or basic housing, or basic medical insurance), and then calculate a rate of reduction as income increases (a reduction of 9¢ per $1 earned for daycare subsidies for each child), you end up with a policy that helps everyone according to their ability to pay.

I’m not impressed by a policy that gives a low income family a 50% credit for their child care expenses. A person earning $8.50 per hour and working 20 hours per week will be earning about $895 per month. If they put their children in the sort of basic daycare facility I’ve described, the cost would be $375 per month, and even if the government covers 50%, that’s still $187.50, leaving them with $707.50 if they have one child in 50% subsidized daycare. I’m also unhappy with benefits that go between 100% subsidies, 50% subsidies, and 25% subsidies. Such benefits drop dramatically when you cross a specific income threshold. Better to just have a standard decrease in benefits matched to your income, so that no one ends up getting hit with a huge increase in expenses if they earn a little more and cross some threshold.