Editor's note: This story was updated on January 3 to note the opening of the scholarship's application.
The state is offering child care workers another incentive to stay in the field: temporary subsidies to help pay for their own children’s care. The assistance is aimed at workers who earn too much to qualify for New Hampshire’s existing child care subsidy but still struggle to afford child care.
The hope is that having more child care workers will expand child care options and allow parents to go back to work.
The application for the six-month program opened this week and is available at nheasy.org.
Under the new pilot program, a family of four earning $125,000 would see their annual cost capped at $8,750.
Under the new pilot program, a family of four earning $125,000 would see their annual cost capped at $8,750.
Jackie Cowell, executive director of Early Learning NH, welcomes the assistance. And she hopes the state can navigate two potentially significant challenges: ensuring child care workers know about the funding and getting workers past the stigma that has kept some families from applying for the existing scholarship program.
On that last front, she encouraged people to think of this aid no differently than they might the FAFSA, the widely used federal student aid application.
“We all send our kids to college. We fill out the FAFSA. We find out if there's any scholarship money out there,” Cowell said. “People should feel exactly the same about their childcare tuition.”
“You can get thousands of dollars off your childcare bill,” she added. “Oh my gosh. Do it. Do it. Do it.”
Those who do want to apply will have to act fast because under the pilot project, these subsidies will be available for just six months. Here’s what child care workers need to know about the program.
Income caps are higher, but families should act fast
Eligibility for the state’s existing child care scholarship is capped at 85% of state median income. For a household of four people, that equates to about $113,430 a year. The temporary assistance for child care workers bumps the cap to 100% or nearly $133,450 a year for a family of four.
The Legislature passed the $1.1 million pilot project earlier this year, but the Department of Health and Human Services got approval to hire a Montana company to run the program just last week. That gives the company very little time to launch an application portal and create a process for evaluating eligibility by the Jan. 1 start date.
Karen Hebert, director for the Division of Economic Stability the the Department of Health and Human Services, encouraged child care workers who think they could qualify for the new program to apply.
Families could see significant savings
Child care is expensive in New Hampshire. According to the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, the average annual price for an infant in a child care center in 2023 was $17,250. That climbed to $31,870 for families with an infant and 4-year-old in a center.
Families who get a child care scholarship under either program would pay far less. Their share of tuition costs would be capped at 7% of their household income. That equates to about $6,450 a year for a family of four with an annual income of $90,000.
Under the new pilot program for child care workers, a family of four earning $125,000 would see their annual cost capped at $8,750.
The scholarship can be used for care at licensed child care centers, licensed home child care centers, and licensed-exempt centers that are registered with the state and enrolled to accept the state’s existing child care scholarships.
Children can attend day care at their parents’ workplace or any other eligible child care programs.
Assistance is going unclaimed
The state estimates that as many as 200 child care workers could qualify for the pilot program. Cowell worries that some eligible workers won’t take advantage of the assistance because the existing scholarship program is being underused, she said.
Hebert said a fraction of the nearly 55,000 children who could qualify for assistance are enrolled in the program. Though, she cautioned that some of their parents may not want the scholarship because they are not working and do not plan to work.
Cowell said there are many, however, who need the assistance to work are not applying.
“We've been systematically leaving millions of dollars unspent for employment-related child care because there's been such under enrollment year after year after year after year,” Cowell said.
The Legislature has required the Department of Health and Human Services to evaluate how effectively this pilot program increased the child care workforce and allows parents to go back to work. Success could lead to lawmakers extending it. That analysis will be dictated by how many people use it.
The child care crisis remains unsolved
New Hampshire invested more than $160 million during the pandemic in supporting child care workers and working families. Federal pandemic aid that is now gone covered the vast majority of that. That worries child care advocates who know centers are struggling to cover their expenses and can’t pay competitive wages to recruit and hold onto workers.
Still, Hebert said she’s hopeful.
“I think that while the pandemic really exacerbated some of the problems, it actually brought a lot of visibility,” she said. “So if there's a positive in there somewhere, it's really the fact that this has been so spotlighted now nationally, not just in New Hampshire.”
Child care providers, advocates, parents and lawmakers are collaborating in ways they never have, Hebert said. That collaboration and awareness led lawmakers to make unprecedented investments in child care last session. That need has not gone away, advocates said.
“There are parents who either have not been able to go to work or are not going back to work because they can't afford (child care) or they can't find access to child care. And that’s a problem,” Hebert said. “If we look at how we can address that problem, get people into childcare so that they can access it and afford it, there's a whole population of people there that could go back to work.”
