The organization that I have chosen is National Association
of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. The NACCRRA promotes national
policies and partnerships to advance development and learning of all children.
The organization also provides vision, leadership, and supports their local communities
‘network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. There website is http://www.naccrra.org/
The organizations website offers a wealth of valuable
information. A few areas are programs and services, about child care, public
policy, and child care news.
This week I took the time to navigate throughout the site.
While doing so I found many great tools. Keeping a focus on this week’s
discussion I chose to focus more on the subcategories child demographics and
poverty.
A fact sheet, Who’s Minding The Kids? Child Care
Arrangements takes a look at recent information from the 2011, U.S. Census
Bureau. The fact sheet takes a look at the need for child care according to a
parents work schedule.
According to the report of the 20 million children younger than age 5
living with their mothers, 11 million have working mom. Almost one-third, 33.3
million children are living with mothers working non-traditional hours. 1.7
million children live below the poverty level even though their mothers are
working. Children under age 6 living in single mother-headed households were
about four times as likely as their peers in married-couple households to be
living in poverty in 2010:58.2 percent of young children of single mothers
versus 13.4 percent of young children in married-couple households. The number
of young children under 6 in poverty increased from 6.0 million in 2009 to 6.3 million in 2010.
According to the Census report, in 2010, the number of children living in
families in deep poverty (with income below 50percent of their poverty
threshold) rose by half a million children. 7.4 million children, or 9.9
percent, lived in families with income below 50 percent of their poverty
threshold, up from 9.3 percent and 6.9 million in 2009.
Reading these reports I could not help but reflect on how families
receiving child care assistance have been affected by a shortage in their
states funding. Many parents barely bringing in any income will soon be faced
with higher out of pocket child care expenses. Many families are considering
quitting their jobs to stay at home and care for their children. With these
actions pushing those already below the poverty level lower than they were
before. Within the next few weeks I hope to continue advocating for those
families who are risk of losing their child care subsidies and at risk of being
without jobs. I could go even further in detail as how they may also be face
with putting their children in care that do not meet quality standards.
Reference
http://www.naccrra.org/about-child-care/poverty, retrieved
May 8, 2012
The statistics are quite startling! I know that in my school more and more families are qualifying for Free and Reduced Meals because their income is so low. How do you advocate for these families? Clearly I need to be more involved in that.
ReplyDeleteWe are studing the same organization, and I want to see the difference in the information that we are going to share in this term. There has been cuts in funding in every program that young children and families participate in across the region. While the organization also provides vision, leadership, and supports their local communities ‘network of Child Care Resource and Referral agencies. I think that the communities hasa to stay on board to help advocate for these program.
ReplyDeleteI know in the state of Georgia, there is a waiting list for assitance especially for childcare. The more mothers quite their jobs the higher the unemployment rate will go up. There are other programs out there to help single mothers with child care expenses.
ReplyDeleteThe NACCRRA's cite is a very good resource and a very popular one at that, I am also using them as my online reference. Exciting to see we chose different topics because I can learn from what you share. The information you provided sparks my interest, I'll be sure to check that out.
ReplyDeleteNACCRRA is a site that is well known for their resources for professionals and families. It would be interesting to see how they would assist the families with the needs of child care funding as the budgets are being cut. In addition to child subsidy for child care through ABC Program in Horry County, families can apply for scholarships. However, there is a limit on the budget for the scholarships becuase of the budget cuts. I heard many people say they would try their best to see if they can get their children into Head Start programs, because they were concerned with High Quality Care of programs.
ReplyDelete