Arizona reinstates state childcare assistance waitlist

Arizona is reinstating a waitlist for families seeking state childcare assistance. The Department of Economic Security made the announcement less than 24 hours before implementing the measure. This comes after state lawmakers failed to fill a multimillion-dollar budget hole left by expiring federal pandemic funds in June.

The move will not affect families already receiving state aid unless they submit renewal documents late. However, new applicants, except those the state cannot legally turn away, will be locked out of the subsidy program indefinitely.

Arizona’s subsidy program was designed to help families in need cover the costs of childcare, which can top $12,000 for toddlers and $14,000 for infants, while they work, go to school, participate in training programs or look for a job. Those eligible to apply include working low-income parents, teen parents in school and parents living in shelters.

Barbie Prinster, Executive Director of the Arizona Early Childhood Education Association, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the waitlist and what it means for families.

Prinster explained that before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a waitlist. When the Childcare and Development Block Grant was reauthorized, they could sometimes let people in through attrition. When the pandemic happened, Arizona received $1.2 billion in federal funding to help stabilize the industry. During the last year, some of those funds expired, and the rest of the funds expired at the end of June.

“We don’t have enough funding as a state to continue all of the programs and initiatives that the Department of Economic Security has put in place,” Prinster said. “So with that, we knew that we were gonna have a waitlist.”

However, Arizona received $12 million in state funding through the general fund, which is historic, according to Prinster, because they have not had that in over 10 years. DES was also able to appropriate their funding through the legislature that they get through the federal government.

Prinster did admit that the short notice from DES was not optimal, although they did expect a waitlist to be reinstated.

“Anybody that had received a job offer and they have children that maybe they need childcare for, maybe you just hired a teacher if you’re a provider, unfortunately, if you didn’t get an application in that day, on the 31st of July, you were put on the waitlist,” Prinster said.

There are some families that are not included in this: children involved with the Department of Public Safety, families involved with the Division of Developmental Disabilities and those who are homeless.

“But if you are a low-income working family wanting to go to work, pay taxes, it kind of defeats the whole purpose. We want people to be able to go to work and be a part of this society,” Prinster said. “We want to be able to hire teachers as well, and that could be a real problem.”

Prinster says this move is not only scary for families, but providers as well. She said there are over 22 thousand children being cared for by a provider, and she doesn’t want them to lose care.

“For another family that’s looking for childcare, they’re just going to have to look at maybe Grandma and Grandpa or Auntie can take care of them, but it’s tough,” Prinster said.