Maria Venegas is a low-income single mom with two kids who works part time and is studying to earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting.
She qualifies for federal assistance that helps pay for her 4-year-old son’s day care, but to stay in the program, Venegas must continually prove she isn’t taking advantage. Keeping her eligibility requires mounds of paperwork, including worksheets that her boss and professors must sign to prove she was there.
If Venegas has no class or work, her son, Jakobo, a student at Clayton Early Learning in northeast Denver, gets no preschool.
It’s a tedious process, and one of many aspects of Colorado’s child-care assistance program — including wide disparity in eligibility across the state — that child advocates are trying to change.
Other parents have lost day-care assistance upon accepting a small raise and making only a few dollars above the eligibility cap. And many in Colorado have struggled to find quality child-care providers that have space for children in the assistance program.
Legislation that tackles a long list of the program’s flaws passed the state House and is headed for a vote in the Senate as soon as this week.
The child-care assistance program began in the 1990s as part of welfare-to-work reform under former President Bill Clinton and is overwhelmingly funded by the federal government. The point is to help low-income families afford child care so parents can work.
But, reform advocates say, the program is too focused on making sure parents are working instead of on whether low-income kids are getting consistent, quality day care and preschool. Under current rules, child care is subsidized only during the hours a parent is working, meaning low-income kids enrolled in day care can attend only when parents are at work.
“It’s all about get to work, get to work, get to work,” said Molly Yost, a policy specialist at Clayton, which provides child care to about 600 mostly low-income children, about 100 of whom are in the state’s child-care assistance program. “But if we are going to look at combating intergenerational poverty, we need to look at where these kids are enrolled and ensuring they are high-quality settings so they can emerge school-ready when they hit kindergarten.”
Opponents say the estimated $10 million state cost of the legislation is too high for the program, which is already an annual $13.6 million expense for Colorado.
Sen. Kevin Lundberg, a Berthoud Republican who voted against the measure, said the state has one of the highest day-care costs in the West and should focus on lowering the cost of day care for all instead of subsidizing it more. “It’s too expensive for every family,” he said.
In Colorado, the money is distributed to counties, which set up many of their own rules for who gets the funding. That means who qualifies — and whether college enrollment or job training count as work — varies widely across the state.
Counties can set their own income eligibility levels, as long as they are not below 130 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $31,000 for a family of four.
But counties are allowed to help families surviving on incomes as high as 85 percent of the state median income, which is about $72,000 for a family of four.
That makes for a wide range. In some counties, including Routt, Prowers and Archuleta, families of four would have to make less than $31,000 to qualify. And in others, families could make significantly more and still get assistance.
The legislation now under consideration, House Bill 1317, would create a new base that every county must use. Any family earning less than 165 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $39,300 for a family of four, would qualify.
The bill also would:
• Create a steppingstone payment plan that would allow parents who get salary increases to gradually increase their day-care co-pay instead of losing assistance entirely.
• Make it statewide policy that job-searching up to 60 days, job-training and college count as work.
• Disconnect parents’ work hours with day-care hours so children can continue to attend regular day care or preschool even if a parent works fluctuating shifts.
• Increase government reimbursement rates for child-care centers that earn quality ranking to encourage centers to serve more children in the program.
• Reduce the frequency with which parents must prove eligibility for the program, cutting down on the paperwork.
Another flaw in the program, reformers say, is that Colorado is not helping enough of the children who are eligible. Of 204,000 children under 12 living below 125 percent of poverty level, the state serves less than 33,000.
“We are not anywhere close,” said Bill Jaeger, vice president of early childhood initiatives for the Colorado Children’s Campaign.
The need is hard to determine because counties do not have to keep waiting lists and most of them don’t.
The state pays $13.6 million per year for the $75.5 million program in Colorado, the rest of the funds coming from the federal government.
At first, counties rejected parts of the bill because they were concerned about giving up some aspects of local control, but after months of discussion, Colorado Counties Inc. now supports the proposal.
“It’s attacking the entire system from start to finish,” said Pat Ratliff, a lobbyist for the counties, calling the proposal balanced.
The bill received bipartisan support in the House and passed 5-2 out of the Senate health committee last week. Its sponsors are Sens. Jeanne Nicholson and John Kefalas and Rep. Crisanta Duran, all Democrats.
The Children’s Campaign, which looked into the program for its annual Kids Count report, is concerned some counties are not spending all of the available money, leaving out children who could benefit. The goal is to shift outdated thinking about proving work status toward using all available funds to prepare low-income children to succeed in school, Jaeger said.
“We’ve got to think about continuous care for our low-income kids instead of focusing on, ‘Is the adult working?’ ” he said.
Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593, jenbrown@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jbrowndpost
