As the pandemic and staffing shortages continue to destabilize Vermont’s fragile child care sector, the state’s leaders are scrambling to push millions in one-time federal cash out to providers to keep them from shutting their doors.
But even as politicians in Montpelier debate tax credits and retention bonuses, IT woes are keeping certain crucial benefits — already stamped into law and paid for — from getting out to families.
To boost utilization, the state has been working on a multi-year redesign of the Child Care Financial Assistance Program, which subsidizes child care for low-income Vermonters. Some of the most impactful changes, greenlit last year in H.171, would have expanded eligibility and dramatically altered co-pays for qualifying families.
A single parent making $15 an hour with an infant and preschooler in child care, for example, would have gone from paying $115 a week to $0.
Those changes were supposed to go into effect Oct. 1. But more than three months later, as the state struggles to build out a new IT system to process the updated benefits, they still haven’t — and it’s not known when they will.
“Unfortunately, just given the complexities which sometimes happen as you’re building new IT systems and you really dive deep into the record requirements gathering, sometimes you find it’s more complex than vendors first anticipated,” Department for Children and Families Commissioner Sean Brown told the House Energy and Technology Committee in mid-January.
The problems have been compounded by key staff departures, officials said, and recruiting new talent has not been easy.
“The hiring environment is incredibly challenging right now,” Michael Blanchard, the department’s director of IT, told lawmakers. “I think the pandemic has created a lot more opportunities for tech professionals here in Vermont to work remotely.”
As a vendor works out the kinks in the state’s new system, DCF officials say they’re at work on an interim measure to try and send simplified payments out to providers. But even here, they hesitate to offer a timeline.
“We don’t have a date,” said Miranda Gray, interim deputy commissioner for DCF’s child development division. “But we are working really diligently to make that happen sooner than later because we do want to make sure that we’re supporting the families to the best of our ability.”
Lawmakers say they’re following the matter closely. Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, the vice chair of the House Human Services Committee, said she and the committee’s chair, Rep. Ann Pugh, D-South Burlington, met with leaders at DCF on the matter before the session kicked off in January. State officials also are regularly coming before the committee to update legislators.
“I think they’re making a good faith effort to try to fix those glitches,” Wood said. “But you know, we are doing more than waiting and seeing. We’re kind of trying to hold feet to the fire and expressing the urgency about this.”
Meanwhile, in Middlebury, Otter Creek Child Center Director Linda January said she was excited when the changes were originally announced.
“I can’t understate how important and what a huge, positive impact this will have on both providers and families,” she said.
According to January, one family pays more than $1,200 a month for care — and that’s after the center kicks in a $600 scholarship. She calculated that the family’s contribution would have been reduced to a little over $500 a month under the new scheme and eliminated the need for the scholarship entirely.
But with the changes on hold for now, those benefits are not getting out to families. And even though the center initially set aside $2,000 in their annual budget to help defray the cost of tuition for families, they have already spent $10,000.
At one point, state officials warned the field that the rollout could take until December, and January communicated as much to parents. But now she has no updates to give.
“Now, it’s just kind of like — I don’t even know what to tell families about the delay,” January said. “Which is hard.”
