Parents' Perspectives on Child Care Subsidies and Moving from Welfare to Work

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Executive Summary

Child care subsidies are an important support service for families moving from welfare to work. The connections between child care and work, and the workoriented focus within the welfare system since welfare reform, have increased the need for links between the welfare-to-work¹ and child care subsidy systems to ensure families receiving TANF and moving off TANF are connected to child care subsidies.

Despite the critical role child care subsidies play for welfare-to-work efforts, little research has examined how sites have linked these services for families and how the process works from families' perspective. In a multiyear study, the Urban Institute sought to fill the information gap about the complex interactions of these two systems on behalf of families in the TANF welfare-to-work system. The first phase of the study (conducted in 2001) examined issues from the perspective of welfare-to-work and child care administrators and staff in 11 sites in 11 states, and focused on how the systems and policies interconnected for families on TANF and participating in welfare-towork activities. The second phase of the project explored subsidy policy issues for parents who had left TANF. The third phase focused on the connections between the welfare-to-work and child care systems from the perspective of parents by examining how parents experienced accessing and retaining subsidies as they moved through and off welfare.

This paper summarizes findings from the third phase of the study. It is based on focus groups conducted in four locations in 2003 with current TANF participants and parents who had left TANF within the past year and were receiving child care subsidies. The report examines how these parents accessed and retained child care subsidies as they moved through and off welfare. However, it is important to note that this study did not examine the experiences of families that were not using subsidies. As a consequence, this study provides important information to help us better understand how these systems and polices work for families in the system, but it does not represent the perspectives of families that were unsuccessful in navigating these systems.

The main findings include the following:

• Child care subsidies are critical for families receiving TANF benefits. Focus group participants, those currently on welfare and those who had recently moved off welfare, spoke at length about the important role that child care subsidies play for their families. Subsidies were viewed as a vital source of financial help that made it possible for parents to engage in welfare-to-work program activities and employment. Focus group participants also noted that subsidies were important for their children because subsidies allowed parents to place their children in care where their children could be safe and learn. Overall, the significant role subsidies play for these families underscores the importance of ensuring families can access these services and are supported in their efforts to leave TANF and become self-sufficient.
• The child care subsidy and welfare-to-work systems are closely linked in the minds and lives of TANF clients. Parents often did not appear to distinguish between the welfare-to-work and child care subsidy systems, and considered the child care subsidies they received part of welfare and their new work requirements. This supports findings from the first phase of the study, which indicated that while subsidized child care and TANF are two separate and distinct systems from an administrative perspective, they are closely linked for clients. Specifically, in most sites, at least some child care subsidy functions were handled by the welfare-to-work case manager; in some sites, parents never came into contact with a child care worker until they left TANF (see Adams, Holcomb, et al. 2006).
  
  The intertwining of child care and TANF has several important implications for administrators and parents:
  
  
• Some parents believed they could not get subsidies unless they were on TANF—a perception with some basis in fact, because some sites had waiting lists for non-TANF recipients needing subsidies. This belief appeared to provide an incentive for some parents to go on TANF.
• Several parents believed they could not keep their subsidies when they left TANF. While not discussed by our participants, this misconception may create an incentive for parents to stay on TANF, and may help explain (at least in part) the low use of subsidies among recent welfare leavers (see Adams, Koralek, and Martinson 2006). Again, this belief had at least some basis in fact. While all sites allowed parents to retain subsidies for a priority period after leaving TANF, in two study sites we visited, parents at the end of their post-TANF priority period were likely to lose subsidies and be placed on a waiting list.

• The welfare-to-work case manager played an important role in determining parents' child care experiences. The close links between the welfare and child care systems are also shown in the reports by focus group participants that welfare-to-work case managers were central to parents' ability to receive subsidies, and to affecting their child care experiences. In addition to authorizing care, welfare-to-work case managers affected whether respondents received information about child care options and assistance in finding care, and determined how long parents had to find care and whether their paperwork was processed in a timely way. Focus group participants' experiences with their welfare-to-work case manager varied, with some parents reporting positive interactions and others having negative experiences. These relationships in turn affected parents' experiences with several issues, including the relative ease or complexity of the subsidy process and finding a child care provider.
• Many participants felt the requirements to obtain and keep subsidies were minimal. Most parents reported that getting and receiving subsidies (both while on TANF and leaving TANF) worked smoothly for them, that they were able to navigate the system successfully, and that they did not have many problems accessing and retaining care. For example, although parents leaving TANF had to assume additional requirements, most focus group participants did not consider these additions particularly burdensome. As noted in the report for the first phase of this study, many agencies had made a concerted effort to streamline the TANF and child care subsidy application and renewal processes to reduce the burden on families. Focus group participants' observations suggest these efforts may have been successful for at least some parents. However, it is important to remember that the focus groups only included parents who were receiving subsidies and who therefore, by definition, had managed to make the system work for them. A conversation with parents who had not successfully made it through the process would likely provide a more complex picture.
• Certain policies or practices appeared to pose challenges for accessing and retaining subsidies. Although getting and keeping subsidies (both while on TANF and when leaving TANF) worked smoothly for many focus group participants, some discussed policies or administrative practices that created challenges. Some challenges were related to certain policies in specific sites or to how the parent had experienced the program in particular sites. They included such issues as having to meet with multiple caseworkers, tightly calibrating subsidies to participation in work-related activities (and the subsequent breaks in subsidy associated with gaps in activities), having difficulty getting providers set up in the subsidy system, having difficulties changing providers, lacking coverage for evening and weekend care, and dealing with additional fees not covered by the subsidy. These issues are important because they may make it more difficult for parents to get or keep child care, or to get the child care they want—problems that seem likely, in turn, to affect their ability to participate in work activities and to move off welfare.
• Finding child care can be challenging. Across the sites, a primary challenge reported by families was finding child care before their work activity started. In particular, parents across our sites reported they did not have enough time to find care and/or would have liked more information or assistance in finding care. Parents also reported several challenges around finding care due to transportation problems.
  
  This is a particularly interesting finding because it is both consistent with and contradictory to findings from the first phase of this study. It is consistent in that phase one found parents in several sites were given relatively little time (between a few days and a week and a half) to find care and were given minimal assistance in finding care (and in many cases this assistance was provided only to families that expressed difficulty finding care). However, it is contradictory in that agency staff in the first phase reported that TANF parents often already knew the provider they wanted to use and did not need help finding care. The focus groups suggested this may not, in fact, be the case. It might be useful for agencies to examine their policies and practices in this are a to see if they can better support parents in their search for child care.
• Parents were frustrated by limited information. In addition to concerns about not getting information about finding care, some participants expressed frustration with what they perceived as limited information about the child care services they might be eligible for and/or those they received. This included, for some parents, the belief that clients were not proactively offered information about their eligibility for subsidies. Other parents lacked information about whether they would be able to continue to receive subsidies or other support services after leaving TANF. While it is unclear whether the problem is related to the parent not getting the information or not retaining it when given, it does suggest that more attention to ensuring parents get key information at various times throughout the process would be helpful.

Notes from this section of the report

1. Throughout this report, we use the term "welfare-to-work" to refer to the TANF employment and training functions.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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