Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 15, 1994 TAG: 9410170050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In January, the Council of Community Services announced that it had been selected to serve as the Roanoke-region base for a state pilot program that would address child-care needs of working families.
The program - called Centers for Families That Work - would help working parents, regardless of income, find affordable, quality child care. Moreover, it would provide $275,000 in child-care subsidies to low-income families in Roanoke and test a new automated method of dispensing those subsidies.
The three-year pilot program would be administered by the Virginia Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs in three localities - Roanoke, Fairfax County and Norfolk.
But last month, just as the program was scheduled to begin its three-year pilot run, the state council yanked child-care subsidy funding from the program and, with it, plans to test the new automated system. The decision puzzled those who had worked since the beginning of the year to ready the program for a fall start-up.
"I don't know why they didn't want to do this," said Pamela Kestner-Chappelear, associate executive director of the Council of Community Services, a human-service planning agency. "To work this long, getting people on a waiting list, developing a policy manual, and then not follow through with it is just strange. There's more here than meets the eye."
Elizabeth Ruppert, executive director of the state agency that was to have administered the program, declined to discuss why subsidy funding was pulled.
"I can't say why, not at this time," she said. "I'm not at liberty to talk about it."
Though subsidy funding has been pulled from the program, its resource and referral component will continue through June 30. Community Services received word two weeks ago that it would receive a $73,000 grant to help working parents find quality child care, Kestner-Chappelear said.
"Hopefully, between now and June 30, we'll be able to secure more funding for resource and referral," she said.
Until the end of September, Kestner-Chappelear said, she thought the entire program was dead.
"We were told things were not looking good for the project," she said. "We asked to meet with Dr. Ruppert, who told us things were being questioned. ... That was the first week in September."
Weeks passed, and Kestner-Chappelear heard nothing to counter assumptions that the program was dead, nor had people in Norfolk and Fairfax County.
"We assumed it was over," she said. "We had no recourse but to lay off the two people we hired for the project."
Those two people - a project director and a child-care counselor - were rehired when the $73,000 grant came through.
Still, the decision to cut out subsidy funding and testing "frustrates me," Kestner-Chappelear said. The program would have tested a new debit-card voucher system for parents, streamlining the administrative process by computer and providing a more efficient way of delivering child-care subsidies.
"These were funds available to test a new method, and it wasn't tested, and we told the community we were going to do this," she said. "It raised expectations of some families who had access to those funds."
Most of the families eligible for subsidies were those seeking employment or receiving employment training - "the working poor," Kestner-Chappelear said.
The program's administering agency - the Virginia Council on Day Care and Early Childhood - is on the hit list of Gov. George Allen's strike force on governmental reform. The strike force has recommended that the council be eliminated and its functions placed in the Department of Social Services.
If the council is dismantled and its functions handled by the department, "it could be that the [Social Services Department] will be testing a new method of administering subsidies," Kestner-Chappelear said.
That could already be in the works. Kestner-Chappelear said she received a letter Thursday from Ruppert, informing her that subsidy funding that had been earmarked for the pilot program would go to the Department of Social Services. It, in turn, would disperse the funds to social service offices in the three areas where the Centers for Families That Work are located.
"We're going to move on," Kestner-Chappelear said. "Our calls for child-care information and referral have tripled since we announced the program in January. We know the need is out there to assist working parents in locating care and giving them support in their search."
The Centers for Families That Work at the Council of Community Services serves families in the Roanoke and New River valleys and the Alleghany County, Franklin County and Martinsville/Henry County areas. For more information, call (703)985-0131 or toll-free, (800)717-3377.
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