I would take sib groups if they were pure evening shift. Like after five p.m. till two a.m. or something like that. As long as the majority of the hours were sleeping hours I would do it.

Daytime... NO

The State pay is SO low and the clients ARE much more difficult to work with as a whole. Always exceptions but in my 15 years of taking State paid I only had a handful that were reliably employed and kept to their agreement with attendance and notice.

I didn't allow more than one slot for State paid on the day shift for most of the time I took it. My cousins kids were with me for three years and he was a DREAM parent to work for. I loved that part of my day care days. He was super excellent to me and I loved having my own flesh and blood in the day care. This was long before DS was born and I wanted kids really badly. They were a pleasure and I was SO bummed when he graduated college and moved up North.

So you definitely can find some deals where it really works but for the most part the State paid slots are your most unstable slots. You not only have money issues but you have other issues that come along with poverty... transportation issues, clothing issues, family drama, job changes, flunking out of school or quitting, etc.

One of the BIGGEST problems I had was them bringing their kid when they weren't working or in school. They could NOT understand that if they were not working they could NOT bring their kid. I had a TERRIBLE issue with that.

Once you give something to someone for free it doesn't take long before that becomes them. They are thoughtless about it and just assume that it is the way it is. It's VERY risky to do this for very long because it becomes not valuable to the receiver once it becomes a given as a way of life. The only way for them to see the value of it is to make it difficult to get and then to remove part of it or all of it.

As a society we do not owe anyone free day care. It's a privledge to live in a country where society values helping people overcome to obstacle of child care when income is low. We don't have to do it. We are doing it to be helpful. If it gets cut off or it is harder and harder to get then it shouldn't be looked at as a bad thing. We can and should do what we CAN but it shouldn't be easy to get.

Here in our State a subsidy for two or more kids in day care is MORE money than the parent that qualifies even makes in their job. We need to really look at that and decide if it is worth investing so much money in it and set some limits for how long each person can access it. It doesn't really pay to have multiple kids in child care when the parent is making minimum wage. We should only allow that for a short window of time... a few years and then put a stop to it.

The other thing that needs to change TODAY is that parents are able to access these grants before accessing child support. NO parent should be able to apply for this assistance until they have begun the process to access child support. Daddy first... then Uncle Sam. It should be a part of every application that forms showing PROOF that child support process has been inititated and updating for every grant renewal to show the process of where the child support is standing. The child support money needs to be included n the grant money calculations.

I'm not saying that a parent who doesn't get child support should be denied... I'm saying they can't apply for it until they apply for child support FIRST. This would stop a LOT of scamming that is going on where parents are claiming Daddy doesn't live with them so they can get free day care. Daddy aint gonna go for the child support deal when he is there in the home.

We should also require that every applicant show proof of US citizenship before applying.

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