Advocates request exemption for teen parents from child care funding freeze
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DENVER — Eighteen-year-old Jazmine Juarez-Gonzalez became a mom almost two years ago. Despite the challenges of being a teenage parent, she is on track to graduate from Florence Crittenton High School this semester.
Juarez-Gonzalez comes to school every day and drops off her daughter, Eliana Isabella, at Florence Crittenton Services’ Early Childhood Education Center, which is on the same campus as the high school and free to student parents.
FloCrit is a nonprofit serving teen mothers and their children, operating on the same campus as the high school by the same name.
Eliana Isabella, like almost all the children attending FloCrit’s ECE center, qualifies for Colorado’s Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP. The state helps pay for her spot at the ECE center so Juarez-Gonzalez doesn’t have to.
But an increase in child care rates means the state doesn’t have the money to fund CCAP anymore. Several counties, including Denver, have frozen enrollment in the program for the next three to five years.
Juarez-Gonzalez’s daughter won’t lose her benefits because she is already enrolled. But the approximately 2,000 babies born to teen parents every year in Colorado won’t be able to rely on the same coverage.
On Monday, the Colorado Teen Parent Collaborative — made up of organizations serving teen parents, including FloCrit — asked county commissioners in Denver, Arapahoe, Jefferson and Adams counties to consider exempting teen parents from the CCAP enrollment freeze.
Although the Collaborative recognizes the budget challenges the state is facing, it wants counties to consider the effect that losing child care support will have on two generations of students: teen parents and their children.
“We’re elevating how impactful it is for teen families who absolutely can’t work or go to school without child care,” said Desta Taye-Channell, CEO of Florence Crittenton Services. “Three to five years can have unintended consequences of keeping families in poverty. If we don’t advocate for the little ones, who’s going to?”
Without access to a free ECE center, Juarez-Gonzalez said she’d have to ask her mom to watch her daughter. That kind of care keeps her daughter safe, but doesn’t provide the same education and socialization she receives at school.
Juarez-Gonzalez said most of her classmates would need to miss school if they didn’t have access to free child care because they don’t have the same family support and can’t afford other child care.
About half of teen mothers graduate from high school, compared to 90% of non-parenting teenage girls.
Students who have access to child care are more likely to earn a diploma. Studies show education helps bring people above the poverty line, which teen parents are more likely to fall under than their non-parenting peers.
“[Child care] changes the trajectories of teen families from families who are going to be left behind to families who can become leaders in the community. That really starts with mom being able to go to school and her child being able to be in the early childhood education center,” said Theresa Garcia, director of development at FloCrit.
The Early Learning Center at New Legacy Charter School in Aurora is free for its student parents and receives about 30% of its budget from CCAP.
Steven Bartholomew, executive director of New Legacy, said almost all of that funding will be gone in two years, after students who currently receive CCAP benefits graduate.
“Education for little ones doesn't start in preschool. It really needs to start in early learning centers with infants and toddlers because they can fall behind by the time they're even in preschool. If we can stay open [without CCAP] the quality of care will go down because I’ll have to let staff go,” Bartholomew said.
“I always talked about how your economic status should not affect your quality of education, but I may have to go back on that now.”
Without CCAP, Bartholomew said New Legacy will need to rely even more on fundraising from foundations and individual donations.
New Legacy is part of the Colorado Teen Parent Collaborative. So is Hope House, a nonprofit supporting teen parents through a resource center, housing program and the only full-time child care center in the metro area where every spot can be filled by a child receiving CCAP funding.
Lisa Steven, founder and executive director of Hope House, said most child care centers only offer a few spots for children receiving CCAP. That’s why Hope House decided to build its own center last year.
Without CCAP, she said Hope House will have to rely on fundraising hundreds of thousands of dollars or will have to open paid spots in its child care center for other families, not just the teen mothers it serves.
CCAP has experienced enrollment freezes on the county level before, but Steven said the length and scope of this freeze are unlike anything she has seen before.
“There's never been something where it's a statewide freeze on every level from [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] to CCAP and for every type of CCAP funding, whether the participant is going to school or going to work,” Steven said. “There's never been a time where I've heard [CCAP] say that it's at least 3 to 5 years, and we're frankly using the term indefinite. Honestly, that's pretty terrifying.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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