Deep cuts in family services proposed for 2012-13, By Corrie MacLaggan, August 20, 2010, Austin American-Statesman: “More than 14,000 Texans who are now in state programs designed to prevent child abuse, neglect and delinquency would lose those services under a state budget-cutting proposal, according to Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs. The Department of Family and Protective Services is suggesting cutting its prevention and early intervention programs by $73.7 million – 84 percent – in the face of the state’s projected $18 billion shortfall for the 2012-2013 budget. The programs contract with nonprofits and local governments to provide services such as mentoring, parenting classes and family crisis intervention counseling. Advocates for at-risk children say that the cuts would be disastrous for low-income families, who are the primary recipients of such services. And they say that stripping programs designed to keep children out of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems would be costlier to the state in the long term…”
Day: August 23, 2010
The Homeless and Access to Health Care
For the homeless, federal changes promise better access to health care, By Mary Agnes Carey and Andrew Villegas, August 20, 2010, Washington Post: “Homeless and unemployed, Tianne Hill said she dreads getting mail at the city shelter on Guilford Avenue where she lives because it often includes medical bills she can’t pay. The 40-year-old former waitress and short-order cook owes about $6,000 for abdominal surgery. She’s expecting another bill soon for emergency treatment of a seizure. And she has other conditions that require expensive care: asthma, arthritis, anxiety and depression. Like many other homeless people, Hill is uninsured and ineligible for Medicaid, the state-federal program that covers millions of other poor Americans. But beginning in 2014, Medicaid greatly expands under the new health-care law to include adults without children, who generally have been excluded. The Medicaid expansion also will enable agencies that serve the homeless to divert resources now spent on medical care to other services such as finding housing and jobs. The new law provides another boost through a five-year, $11 billion expansion of the community health center system that treats many in this population…”
Child Care Subsidies – Georgia
- Operators: State subsidy drives families into low-quality day care, By S. Heather Duncan, August 23, 2010, Macon Telegraph: “Day care providers say the state of Georgia is depressing the day care market and leaving poor families with no choice but to attend the worst day cares. The state pays most of the cost of day care for eligible low-income families by directly reimbursing the day care provider. The state sets that reimbursement payment based on geography and a study of day care rates in the local market. Federal rules require that the state survey the day care market every two years, but Georgia last conducted a survey in 2005 – and last increased its reimbursement in 2006. Congress is now considering a large increase in child care assistance funding. Day care owners say the state should use any new funding to increase its reimbursement rates…”
- Day care assistance funds drying up as need deepens, By S. Heather Duncan, August 23, 2010, Macon Telegraph: “For parents such as Vanita Adams, government help with day care costs made the difference between employment and welfare. Adams, who works as a parent aide for the Macon-Bibb Equal Opportunity Council, received a state subsidy to help her send her two sons to after-school care for about a year. ‘I was separated when it started, and becoming a one-income household was very hard,’ she said. Her divorce was eliminating some of the child care help she had received from family members at the same time she lost income through furloughs. ‘Without the help, I probably would have been out of a job,’ Adams said. Her plight is common. A quarter of Georgia children younger than age 5 receive some kind of subsidized child care, according to a 2010 report by the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute. And since the recession, demand is higher than ever, child care advocates say…”