Poverty Solutions for Child Care

Poverty Solutions for Child Care

It is common to see women in the workplace in society today. Women are now forced to find work to gain an income to provide or help provide for their families. While a single woman or both parents are working, most must find child care which in many cases is very expensive. Child care can be so expensive that it amplifies the poverty problem in society. One way to decrease the added expense of child care is create an employment standard of having a child care center onsite. Although costly to employers, it can dramatically help an employee. Another solution would be to curve available assistance subsidies to better fit the need of assistance and open the eligibility requirements so that assistance can help more individuals. Lastly, if more companies and businesses starting providing a flexible spending account for dependent child care the cost may become more affordable because the monies used to pay for child care would be pretax monies. If we were to apply these solutions the child care expense may become a lesser burden to families trying to provide for their families and decrease poverty.

One solution to reduce the child care cost is to offer a child care center at an employee’s place of employment. There are many benefits to this type of solution. For example, the financial stress of paying childcare that is present now would be completely eliminated. The employee would also be able to be closer in proximity and know what is happening in the child’s day to day activities. In addition to these advantages, research suggests that employers with daycare centers onsite most often see better attendance and attitudes in their employees which can increase productivity (“CHILD CARE”) helping boy the employee and the employer. Although this solution seems to have many advantages, there are several disadvantages that outweigh the advantages. For example, an employer that decides to implement a center onsite must start by locating or constructing an area that has the proper equipment for the needs of a child such as a kitchen to cook and store food in and a restroom for the dependents to potty train or use without distracting employees. Not only would it be difficult for most business to delegate this type of area, but it would be costly to get establish it. Also, an employer would have to acquire all costs associated with the center such as payroll to the teachers and administrators, initial start up costs, safety and health costs, liability costs, food and other supplies, etc. Employers have also found that having a center onsite can often lead to a distracted employee that takes extra breaks to see their child (“CHILD CARE”). Some employers simply do not have a high enough need for child care. Understandably, most employers view the disadvantages more costly to the company than the overall benefits of the advantages.

Another idea to help decrease poverty in those who must pay child care is to curve assistance programs and open eligibility requirements to better assist a larger amount of parents. I feel very strongly about this solution in particular because I had a bad experience with assistance in the past. As a single parent, I was working fulltime and had my child in fulltime daycare. Because I was considered low income, I was able to receive