Children First for Oregon

With budgets tight, child care subsidy gets cut

By Shellie Bailey-Shah KATU News and KATU.com Staff

PORTLAND, Ore. - Low-income parents may find themselves without child care in the next few months after a program meant to help many of them work is being slashed.

The latest victim, Employment Related Day Care, is part of the nine percent cut Oregon’s Gov. Ted Kulongoski has ordered across all departments.

Terra Buchanan, a single mother of two, will be one of 5,500 families out of 11,000 who will lose the day care subsidy by the end of the year. In all 10,250 children will be affected.

She got a letter this weekend that said her day care subsidy will be eliminated Dec. 31. Buchanan gets $631 a month to pay for child care so that she can work at a $13- an-hour job at a call center. Without it, she says she’ll have no choice but to go back on state assistance.

“It’s going to have to cost more in the end,” she said. “If they take away my ability to work, I now need their help to pay my rent, my electricity, food, everything that I was doing myself by having a job, I’m now going to need the state to help me with because there’s no way for me to afford it.”

The subsidy she receives from the state pays for about two-thirds of her child care expense.

But starting Dec. 31, only families who’ve received state welfare assistance - called TANF - in the past two years will qualify for the day care help.

Gene Evans, with Oregon’s Department of Human Services, acknowledged these cuts will mean some working parents will lose their jobs.

“A reduction in their child care is going to have an impact on their ability to stay employed,” he said. “It’s a bad choice for everybody involved.”

Buchanan says it will ultimately cost taxpayers even more money.

“If they take it away, there’s no way for me to support my kids, and I’m back on welfare again,” she said. “I’m technically in the system even more if they take this away from us.”

At this point, the only thing that can save the day care subsidy is action by the state Emergency Board, which is made up of lawmakers. Last week the board saved a senior in-home care program that was on the chopping block, but the board likely will not meet again until the fall.