really trying’: Child care puts parents on the edge

BY NATHAN GRANGER | LINK nky REPORTER

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Editor’s note: On the Edge is a regular feature that explores the challenges of the rising cost of living in Northern Kentucky.

Keaisha Trapp, adult education student at Brighton Center and single mother to her 2-year-old son, doesn’t get as frustrated with the public benefits system as she used to.

But she has no illusions about how difficult the process can be to not only gain benefits, but keep them.

“I think it’s unfair,” Trapp told LINK nky. “It’s unfair because at the end of the day, I still have to take care of him by myself, and still got to keep up with all the paperwork that you need to keep up. You got to abide by the rules, cut off times, and it’s just a lot that comes with it.”

Trapp is one of thousands of parents with children enrolled in publicly subsidized child care who still struggle to afford the bill. In the 2019-2020 school year, 45,836 young Kentucky kids were in a publicly subsidized early childhood care or education setting, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

The average cost of childcare at a mid-tolarge-sized licensed facility amounts to about $35 a day, according to a November 2021 report from the policy center.

At five days a week for 50 weeks per year, that amounts to nearly $8,890, which is “far more than full-time tuition at a Kentucky Community and Technical College ($5,370 per academic year) and nearly as much as a full-time student pays for tuition at Western Kentucky University ($10,992 per academic year),” according to the study.

“This large expense often comes at a time when parents are still early in their careers, near their lowest earning years, and when necessary expenses like housing costs and student loans are near their highest. In fact, family net wealth is at its lowest on average during the first five years of the first child’s birth.”

And as earners like Trapp gain more income, subsidized child care disproportionately drops off in what many refer to as a benefits cliff – meaning when more money comes in, they lose more in benefits than

Continues on page 4 they gained through the raise.

For many in the Northern Kentucky region, the cliff’s edge has always been razor thin when it comes to child care. Most government benefit programs were not meant to be permanent solutions to economic hardship.

And Trapp and others in similar situations have had to come to terms with this over the years.

“We’re in school now, helping ourselves, and that’s why they’re helping us,” Trapp said, referring to her classmates and herself. “Once we get out of school, and they break us loose and cut the apron strings ... everything disappears. It’s not something that’s long term, lifetime, not insurance type of thing. It’s just something that helps you get on your feet and stuff. But when they blindside you, and they just hit you with that letter, you be like, ‘Oh, dang, I wasn’t ready.’”

The letter Trapp received notified her that her child care benefit, which helped offset the cost of daycare for her son, was decreasing due to a change in her income. Starting in July, she’ll owe the daycare center a $160 copayment per week.

The biggest drop in child care benefits occurs when a household goes from earning $40,000 to $42,000 annually, according to data from the National Center for Children in Poverty. That increase of $2,000 of annual income results in a loss of $5,000 in government assistance for a single parent with two kids.

“It’s tricky,” said Jonika Greene, director of workforce development at Brighton Center.

Greene described how many people trying to improve their economic station by getting more education or training are often taken aback by how quickly they lose benefits. This is especially true for jobs in healthcare, where certifications and other credentials can immediately make someone eligible for a pay raise.

“If you go from zero income to getting a job, and then in 90 days get a raise, your income fluctuates so quickly,” Greene said. “Say, you get a certification and then complete your 90-day probation period and your raise doubles – which happens, especially in healthcare or what have you – that can change your situation drastically.”

Not only will a bump in income affect child care benefits, Greene said, but it impacts all subsidized benefits designed to help people come back from economic hardship.

“If you have subsidized housing, you’re paying more rent. If you receive SNAP benefits, those are being reduced. If you were getting cash assistance as a supplement, that goes away as well,” Greene said.

Greene works with Trapp and other students at the Brighton Center for Employment Training in Newport. Brighton Center offers accredited training programs in several fields, such as medical assisting, healthcare administration technology and human resources.

It also offers a variety of wrap-around services to address hardships that low-income people tend to experience, including child care services. Moreover, Brighton Center tries to instill its clients with skills that will allow them to sustain higher incomes once they leave the program, skills like financial literacy.

Trapp is a medical assisting student. She takes classes in the evening and works during the day at a FootLocker in Liberty Township, Ohio, where she was recently promoted to sales lead–hence the change in her benefits.

Like many at the center, she receives benefits from the Kentucky Child Care Assistance Program, often shortened to CCAP, which helps cover daycare expenses for her son.

She worked as a phlebotomist at the West Chester branch of UC Hospital in the past but left that job and rolled back her hours to continue her education. Long-term she wants to open her own lab facility after earning her medical assisting credentials. When she graduates from Brighton, she can expect to start earning $18 to $20 per hour, according to Greene.

Trapp can’t deny that the higher income will be better for her family in the long run, but, as it stands, keeping her balance along the benefit cliff is a challenge, as evidenced by the recent change in her child care benefits.

Like anyone who receives Kentucky child care benefits, Trapp has to be working or in some kind of education program in order to get assistance. She does both, not only because it will help her reach her long-term career goals, but also to placate the system.

“I choose to do both just to show them, like, I’m not just sitting around,” Trapp said. “I’m really trying.”

As of July of last year, families applying for Kentucky’s subsidized child care program must have a gross income below 85% of the median, or the middle, of the state in order to be eligible for benefits.

Copayments are then determined based on exact income and family size. If a family’s income exceeds 85% of the state median, which is roughly $42,000 per household, they can apply for Kentucky’s Transitional Child Care Assistance, or K-TAP, which provides six months of assistance to help families adjust to earning more.

But the process for applying to different benefit programs can be onerous.

“In Kentucky, you will do a separate intake for Section 8, a separate intake of food stamps, a separate intake for WIC, a separate intake for CCAP, a separate intake for Medicare. You will do five intakes to get all of your visits. That is, every intake takes two or three hours of your time,” said Rebecca Dececco, former executive director of child care at Florence Christian Church, which provides nonprofit child care services.

To make matters worse, child care centers are often plagued with long wait lists, high staff turnover and teacher shortages. Dececco said that her program had about 40 to 50 families on its waiting list, when she spoke with LINK nky in 2022.

Staffing shortages have risen due to a variety of factors, but arguably the biggest cause is declining wages among teachers generally.

According to the National Center of Education Statistics, the data analysis arm of the U.S. Department of Education, average salaries for primary and secondary school teach- ers in Kentucky have declined by 15% since the 2009-2010 school year, when adjusted for inflation.

“We do not have enough teachers to serve all the children that need our services,” said Delissa Ford-Edwards, family and child development director at Brighton Center.

Ford-Edwards works with families at the Brighton Center’s employment programs as well as the center’s Northern Kentucky Scholar House, which provides multi-generational affordable housing, case management and education. She also works with families at Brighton’s Bright Days Child Development Center, which provides child care and education.

“With the shortage of workers, it’s hard to place children in child care right now,” Greene said. “Child care workers, like teachers, probably don’t make as much as they should.”

Brighton Center’s child care programs are licensed to serve 110 children, but they can only manage about 30 right now due to staffing shortages.

The pandemic made everything more difficult for parents and benefits providers alike.

Kentucky lost 174, or 8.9%, of its accredited childcare centers between March of 2020 and July of 2021, according to a 2021 presentation from the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services to the Kentucky General Assembly’s budget review subcommittee on human resources.

Likewise, Kentucky’s child care benefit enrollment dropped when lockdowns were Continues on page 6 instituted and people left the workforce. In March 2020, there were over 29,000 children enrolled in the program.

Within a year, the number had dipped to 17,000 before rising to 25,000 by July of 2021. An injection of federal American Rescue Plan Act funds offset the problem a little bit, but the childcare sector still lags behind the demand for its services.

Broad systemic problems are difficult enough, but personal circumstances can make finding reliable child care even more difficult.

Jennifer Botz is in the same program as Trapp and hopes to become an addiction counselor long-term. She’ll participate in an extern program with Transitions, a drug rehabilitation center in Erlanger, when she completes her medical assisting program.

For Botz, the prospect of working at Transitions is vindicating.

“I have a past,” Botz said, but didn’t want to elaborate. “So it’s very difficult to find places that are willing to accept me. So, Transitions is one of them that is okay with my past.”

She has a son who’s preparing to enter kindergarten, and even though she qualifies for Kentucky’s Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP) and other benefits, she asked her mother to watch her son, rather take him to a daycare center.

Although relying on a family member might save her money, she was ambivalent about the arrangement.

“I don’t want him spending the summer not being with other kids because he’s an only child,” Botz said. “She [Botz’s mother] doesn’t have a vehicle, so they’re stuck in the house. I want him to be able to have a good summer and play with other kids and be around other kids.”

The closer she gets to completing her studies, the closer she gets to the cliff.

“I do have a fear of when I start working full-time that my K-TAP’s going to be gone,” Botz said. She worries her SNAP benefits will disappear too.

“Food stamps, you know, you really don’t know how much you’re spending when you’re using it,” Botz said. “And then when it’s gone, you know, then you really realize, Oh my gosh, I’ve got to pay, like, nowadays $5 for a loaf of bread.”

Food has seen one of the largest increases in cost over the last year, according to the Consumer Price Index, increasing 9.5% in price since Feb. 2022. Shelter and energy have also seen precipitous increases at 8.1% and 5.2% since Feb. of last year, respectively.

Losing Medicaid is her “biggest fear.”

Botz is planning on moving her son to a daycare center once he starts kindergarten, which will only be in session for half a day.

“I would prefer him to go to daycare, rather than go home to my house at noon,” Botz said.

“I’m nervous, but I’m still going to do it.”

“I say go for it,” Trapp said in conversation with Botz and LINK. “It’s going to help you in the long-term.”

For people like Botz and Trap, who have

“I’m 42, and my thing is I have a second chance,” Botz said. “I don’t have time to wait. I have to just go full force.”

“I was out of work for two years before I started working in West Chester,” Trapp said. “And that’s only because I was afraid to put him back in and pay a copayment.”

She concluded, “I’m not fearful of it anymore. Like, what more can they take from me? Like, I’m working my hardest. I’m doing what I need to do… I can prepare now, and I’m gonna start off part-time and just going to have to see from there.”