By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer
This story is the fourth in a series about the real and potential effects to Orange County residents of state budget cuts. This week, we look at childcare and early childhood education.
As director of the Orange County Department of Social Services, Nancy Coston has a lot of experience working within her means, bringing much-needed services to local families. In the present economic climate, every dollar counts, especially in the realm of social services. But in considering the impacts of widespread budget cuts, child care is the first thing Coston mentions.
“For the last two years, we’ve received a significant decrease in the child-care subsidy fund,†which provides funds for child care for families who couldn’t otherwise afford it, she said. This year, Orange County received $4.1 million for child-care subsidies, down from a recent high of $4.9 million, meaning that there are nearly 650 children in Orange County who qualify for the child-care subsidy who can’t get it.
So what do families do?
“Some are hanging on with family members and so forth,†Coston said. “Some are paying what they can. Some are losing their jobs.â€
But without the money, Coston’s hands are tied.
“When we knew the cuts were coming, we stopped taking people into the program,†she said. But, “Orange DSS did not stop serving anyone who was already getting child care.â€
So families are placed on a waiting list, with certain groups – like children in protective services or those with adolescent parents – given priority.
“It became increasingly difficult for us even to serve our priority groups when the money started drying up,†Coston said. Luckily, the county provided some funding in its 2011-12 budget to help DSS serve those groups.
“We’re trying to piece together what we can for our priority groups, but the picture is quite bleak for working families,†Coston said, citing some families who have been waiting for child care for 18 months or longer.
“Child care is very expensive,†she added.
The cuts have also impacted child-care providers, since Coston can’t guarantee them a set number of children anymore.
Major cuts
DSS works with organizations like the Orange County Partnership for Young Children to provide services to residents who need them. The partnership matches children with child-care providers and pre-kindergarten placements, administering the county’s Smart Start allocation and a portion of its pre-kindergarten dollars. Smart Start is an initiative started by Gov. Jim Hunt that provides comprehensive early-childhood programs in health and education.
“Over the past three years, basically since the recession started, Smart Start has received a budget cut,†said Margaret Samuels, executive director of the partnership. “It’s been really awful in the past few years watching the budget shrink and shrink, because it does have an impact.â€
In this year’s state budget, cuts to Smart Start and the North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten program – formerly known as More at Four – totaled 20 percent, Samuels said. Different school districts across the state treat pre-k in different ways; in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, some pre-k students are served within the public schools while other slots are available in private schools.
“That has affected our community significantly,†Samuels said. “It means less money for child-care payments, subsidy payments.â€
“It also means we got reduced slots for the N.C. Pre-K,†she added.
The partnership also administers a number of programs associated with Smart Start, like a special services coordination program in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools that helps identify children with special needs, but that program was cut this year because of budget reductions.
The county has helped out with some programs though, like an early-childhood dental project that the county health department started funding when the partnership was no longer able to do so.
“We worked really hard to work with the county this year because we were really worried about some of these programs,†Samuels said, adding that both the Orange County Board of Commissioners and county staff have been very supportive.
“Counties have limited funds as well. The mess is kind of all over,†she said. “It’s really difficult because so many of our programs … were showing real outcomes for children and their families.â€
Samuels said the partnership has cut its budget pretty much to the basics at this point, and that she worries about future cuts.
“We are going to be watching the outlook very closely,†she said. “Our eternal hope is that everyone recognizes the benefit of early-childhood [programs] and that the more funds we put in early childhood, the less issues we have down the road.â€