Las Vegas NowChild Services Hoping for More Money

Child Services Hoping for More Money

Nearly 4,000 low-income Nevada families, in which both parents work, currently get state assistance to help pay their child care costs. But budget cuts have now eliminated those funds for more than 100 of the poorest working families. Hundreds more remain on a waiting list.

Without that child care assistance, many of Nevada's poorest working parents might be forced to quit working or leave their children in an unsafe situation while they try to hang on to their jobs.

"It comes down to a choice of do I buy groceries or do I pay for child care?" said Debbie Altman.

Altman owns the Small World Learning Center in an at-risk neighborhood near Charleston and 28th, "90 to 95-percent of my parents receive some kind of subsidy."

That means the government pays for most, if not all, of their child care costs so that their parents can keep working, or in the case of Desirae Williams, work full-time, go to school, and aspire to succeed in life:, "I want to own and operate my own daycare center one day."

Williams, a mother of four, depends on her state child care assistance to help her achieve that goal, "We are not people who don't want to work. We want to work and we want to better ourselves."

But budget cuts have already eliminated state subsidized child care assistance for dozens of Southern Nevada families. Hundreds more remain on a waiting list with no end in sight.

"We are the voices of our children on welfare," said licensed child care provider Marabal Rodriguez.

That's why parents and child care providers pleaded with state lawmakers to act quickly to resolve this crisis before even more of Nevada's poorest working families are impacted.

"Get these families off the waiting list, get these parents back to work, they're leaving their two-year-olds at home with six-year-olds," said Altman. "These are dangerous, dangerous conditions and I hear about it everyday."

One partial solution would be to use the state's $5 million child care reserve fund, "They need to tap into that. We don't need a reserve for a rainy day, because right now, it's pouring."

$14 million in federal stimulus funds has been earmarked for Nevada's child care assistance program, but state lawmakers say that's still not enough to accommodate a waiting list that's expected to balloon to 2,500 children over the next two years.