Getting and Retaining Child Care Assistance: How Policy and Practice Influence Parents' Experiences

The UrbanInstitutePhone: 202.833.7200Fax: 202.429.0687E-Mail: paffairs@ui.urban.orghttp://www.urban.orgOccasional Paper2100 M Street, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20037Nonprofit Org.U.S. PostagePAIDPermit No. 8098Mt. Airy, MDAn Urban InstituteProgram to AssessChanging Social PoliciesOccasional Paper Number 55Assessingthe NewFederalismGetting andRetaining ChildCare Assistance:How Policy andPractice InfluenceParents’ExperiencesGina AdamsKathleen SnyderThe Urban InstituteJodi R. SandfortThe Humphrey Institute of Public AffairsGetting andRetaining ChildCare Assistance:How Policy andPractice InfluenceParents’ExperiencesAdams, Snyder, and SandfortGetting and Retaining Child Care Assistance Getting andRetaining ChildCare Assistance:How Policy andPractice InfluenceParents’ExperiencesGina AdamsKathleen SnyderThe Urban InstituteJodi R. SandfortThe Humphrey Institute of Public AffairsOccasional Paper Number 55An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social PoliciesThe Urban Institute2100 M Street, N.W.Washington, DC 20037Phone: 202.833.7200Fax: 202.429.0687E-Mail: paffairs@ui.urban.orghttp://www.urban.org Copyright © March 2002. The Urban Institute. All rights reserved. Except for short quotes, no part of this bookmay be reproduced in any form or utilized in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including pho-tocopying, recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the UrbanInstitute.This paper is part of the Urban Institute’s Assessing the New Federalismproject, a multiyear project to monitorand assess the devolution of social programs from the federal to the state and local levels. Alan Weil is the proj-ect director. The project analyzes changes in income support, social services, and health programs. In collabora-tion with Child Trends, the project studies child and family well-being.This paper has received direct funding from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Assess-ing the New Federalismproject is supported by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation,The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The Ford Foundation, TheDavid and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, TheCommonwealth Fund, the Stuart Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, The Fund for New Jersey, The Lyndeand Harry Bradley Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation.The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consid-eration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, itstrustees, or its funders. Assessing the New Federalismis a multiyear Urban Institute projectdesigned to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programsfrom the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on healthcare, income security, employment and training programs, and social ser-vices. Researchers monitor program changes and fiscal developments. In collaborationwith Child Trends, the project studies changes in family well-being. The project aimsto provide timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help stateand local decisionmakers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.Key components of the project include a household survey, studies of policies in 13states, and a database with information on all states and the District of Columbia,available at the Urban Institute’s Web site (http://www.urban.org). This paper isone in a series of occasional papers analyzing information from these and othersources.Analysis for this report was completed by the authors along with Patricia McMahon.The research presented in this report is based on the site visits and data collection ofa larger team of researchers, which includes the authors, Patricia McMahon, JamesBarsimantov, Jeffrey Capizzano, Deborah Montgomery, Stefanie Schmidt, FreyaSonenstein, and Kathryn Tout.The authors would like to thank Sarah Adelman, Monica Rohacek, Mallory Barg,and Mark Himmelsbach for their assistance throughout this project. The authorswould also like to thank Freya Sonenstein, Matt Stagner, Alan Weil, Karen Tvedt,Helen Blank, Mark Greenberg, and Jennifer Mezey for their helpful comments onearlier versions of the report.A special thanks to the many state and local child care administrators who partici-pated in the interviews and reviewed an earlier draft of this report, as well as the manychild care caseworkers, providers, and parents who participated in our focus groups. ContentsExecutive Summary . . . . viiIntroduction . . . . 1Different Perspectives On What Parents Have to Do to Access and RetainSubsidies . . . . 4The Research Approach: Examining Child Care Policies, Practices, andImplementation . . . . 6What Is in