Taig-Lynch recalled an email she received from her daughters’ child care facility, Pine Forest, in Burlington, Vermont, encouraging families to take advantage of a new state law that makes more people eligible for child care assistance.
But Lynch, who works full-time as an office manager for an engineering company, has 17-month-old twins, a long to-do list and a heavy emotional burden that all parents of young children share. .
“So I ignored it for a while and didn’t look at much information to decide if it was worth applying,” she said.
Ms. Lynch and her partner, who works in auto insurance, have a combined household income of $120,000, with a monthly income of $10,000. 400 percent of the federal poverty level For a family of four, this amount is usually considered too high to receive meaningful government subsidies. This is especially true for childcare subsidies, which are only about 1 in 7 eligible families You can actually receive it in America.
But then one of Lynch’s colleagues started looking into childcare changes specific to Vermont. Act 76The bill passed over a bipartisan veto and will become law in June 2023. He suggested that Ms. Lynch should apply even though her household income is in the six figures.
Lynch went online, downloaded the application, described it as “easy to fill out,” and submitted it.
What happened next was a big surprise.
“I heard back within 48 hours and found out I was eligible,” Lynch said. Instead of paying $3,068 a month for child care for her twin girls, she would be responsible for $1,000 without any additional changes or paperwork. “I couldn’t believe it,” Lunch said. “It didn’t seem real to me.”
How does the state break it down? With this handy chartGiven Lynch’s household income of $10,000 a month for a family of four, the family’s weekly child care costs would be capped at $250. Previously, nearly all of Lynch’s take-home pay went toward childcare for her daughters. She was paid an hourly wage, so if she had to miss work because the girls got sick or Pine Forest was closed for a day, her income would be reduced.
But now she will receive an additional $2,000 each month. What is she going to do with it? “We finally had the ability to save money. We were at the point where we were seeing our checking account get smaller and smaller every month,” Lynch said. “It’s still too early to know how it will affect us, but things will be much better.”
Vermont Act 76 celebrated its one-year anniversary this summer. The cost of the law new payroll taxis designed to help families with multiple children, like Lynch and the twins, save more. Importantly, the cost savings increase significantly when you have two children. The high cost of raising a second child is a tipping point for many families, and it may make more financial sense for one parent to quit their job, says advocacy group First Children’s Finance of Vermont. explained Erin Roche, director of . Implementation of Law No. 76.
Under Vermont’s old system, it provided child care subsidies to families with incomes up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level, but many families receiving subsidies had to pay higher copays. Ta. As of Oct. 7, Vermont child care subsidies will be available to households earning 575 percent of the federal poverty line. For a family of four, this rate is close to an adjusted gross household income of $180,000.
For those who study child care policy, such a generous leap is unprecedented. Advocates and policy experts will be watching closely to see how this unfolds. Roche estimates that the significant increase in eligibility will make the subsidy available to 80 to 90 percent of all Vermont households with young children.
But parents like Lynch aren’t the only ones who benefit from the program. Under Act 76, Lynch’s child care center, Pine Forest, would also see an increase in collections because it would be reimbursed for the actual cost of child care, rather than what families could afford. Instead of receiving $3,068 a month to care for Lynch’s two young children, the center will now receive $3,768, a jump of $700.
Vermont has also narrowed the gap between reimbursement levels for family child care centers and child care centers. This is because childcare centers traditionally charge high fees. In doing so, home-based child care becomes more profitable and sustainable, resulting in the creation of more than 1,000 new child care slots in Vermont in just one year.
Roche credits Vermont’s small size and state agencies with getting these systems up and running quickly to support Act 76. One hurdle, she noted, was ensuring the state’s IT systems were ready for the online application system.
“Each of the changes in Act 76 required state agencies to create a system or change a system, and it literally took less than two weeks to make the first change,” Roche said. I did.
While not all families will immediately see a surge in benefits like Lynch’s, Roche estimates that many will, especially those where both parents work full-time. Families where a parent or guardian stays home and does not work or attends school full time are not eligible.
Providing access to reliable child care is one way to strengthen the workforce of parents. And it may have the effect of changing people’s minds about the costs and burdens of having more children. According to research Many families who choose not to have children cite cost as a major factor.
Lynch said with a smile that she and her partner had originally only intended to have one child, but “then we were lucky enough to have twins.”
Will receiving additional financial support for childcare change her prospects for having more children in the future?
“I don’t know how to answer,” she said. “But it certainly makes it more likely.”
