OF: ANNA KAMINSKI
Kansas Reflector

TOPEKA — Child care providers in Kansas view the state’s child care subsidy program as cumbersome and ineffective, according to a new survey, but they also see ways to fix the underutilized system.

In partnership with Kansas State University, the Hutchinson-based United Methodist Health Ministry Fund pointed out a report Wednesday, detailing providers’ perceptions of the state’s child care subsidy program.

Child care providers and administrators in Kansas said the state’s processes can be a barrier to those seeking assistance because of excessive paperwork, lack of communication and strict eligibility requirements, the survey found. That’s in addition to inadequate repayment rates and late payments.

Jennifer Francois, survey author and K-State professor, said in a news release that the purpose of the study was to better understand providers and their thoughts on how to improve Kansas’ child care subsidy system to increase participation. Ninety-three Kansas counties were represented in Francois’ survey of nearly 300 child care providers and administrators.

In Kansas, families qualify for the state’s child care subsidy program if they fall into one of four categories: they receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, benefits; they have low income or an adoptive parent and work; conducts education or training activities; or I’m a teen parent graduating high school or GED. The Kansas Department of Children and Families administers the program and charges families payments to their Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT, cards each month, and the family pays child care providers.

Desiree Streight, owner of Little Explorers Play School in Kingman, south-central Kansas, welcomes families who use the subsidies and said at a news conference Wednesday that families and child care providers are bearing the brunt of a broken system. Seven of the 12 children she cares for are from families that receive child care subsidies, she said.

“Those families are working hard to get by,” Straight said.

Assessing eligibility takes too long, and already struggling families often can’t afford the costs of child care or the penalties associated with the state’s subsidy program, she said.

More than 70 percent of providers identified higher reimbursement rates and direct payments to providers as ways to increase program participation, the Health Ministry fund survey found.

“Kansas is one of the few states left that pays subsidies to families, or stipends, to then pay the provider, and oftentimes that’s ineffective,” David Jordan, executive director of the Department of Health fund, said at the conference in presser.

DCF’s grant program is underutilized. A report based on 2020 data from the Center for Law and Social Policy found that 12 percent of eligible families participate. This was lower than the national rate of 14%.

Other states use presumptive eligibility, which allows families to enroll their children in child care while they are going through the application process for assistance. Kansas has nothing like that.

However, Kansas is not unique in its child care challenges.

“Every state is struggling in its own way,” said Emily Barnes, education policy adviser for the Topeka-based nonprofit Kansas Action for Children. “Every state is working to increase the effectiveness of their system, and part of that is we haven’t had a proper conversation in a very long time.”

As those working in the child care and child advocacy fields look toward the 2025 legislative session, more funding for providers, which could mean dipping into the state’s general fund and reevaluating work requirements to qualify for child care subsidies could reduce barriers.

Quality, affordable child care is important to Kansans. Kansas Speaks, a comprehensive statewide poll by Fort Hays State University’s Docking Institute, found that more than 85 percent of Kansans believed that “high-quality, affordable child care for infants and toddlers is extremely or very important to Kansas families, whether or not they had young children.”

The same survey found that nearly 80 percent of Kansans surveyed either strongly agree or somewhat agree that access to affordable child care strengthens the economy.