Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Child care vouchers for public assistance recipients
1:57:18
·
156 sec
Council Member Restler inquires about the potential loss of federal funds due to non-compliance with work requirements and the anticipated increase in child care voucher needs. Administrator French explains the potential financial penalties and provides details on the expected increase in child care voucher recipients.
- Failure to comply with work requirements could result in tens of millions of dollars in penalties
- The administration expects an increase from 23,000 to 63,000 cash assistance clients accessing childcare by January 2027
- Factors contributing to this increase include a larger cash assistance caseload and changes in child care certification periods
Lincoln Restler
1:57:18
And could you just, if if you would, if you happen to have this on your fingertips, my understanding is that failure to comply with this federal requirement would lead to the city and state losing out on significant federal funds.
1:57:34
Can you speak to the scale of the funding that we would lose if we did not comply with the work requirements?
Scott French
1:57:40
I can't speak specifically to the scale just because we haven't experienced this before, and this is not something the federal government has really been, you know, implementing, you know, that much.
1:57:52
So there isn't a lot for us to specifically look at.
1:57:54
But what I can say is it is a requirement.
1:57:57
The requirement is actually connected to the work participation rate the state is meant to get for individuals on TANF, right, that's almost exclusively families with children.
1:58:09
And those rates are set at the federal level and that missing those rates will incur, you know, fiscal penalties.
1:58:17
My understanding is that, you know, the penalties could be on a sliding scale depending on how close or far you are from the rate you were supposed to meet.
1:58:26
But, you know, the details of that we we don't fully have, but we expect it to be, you know, potentially in the tens of millions of dollars or more, but we we don't have specifics on that.
1:58:37
But it's significant.
Lincoln Restler
1:58:38
And your current modeling is that you're anticipating 40,000 additional public assistance recipients will take advantage will be will need, I should say, child care vouchers to be able to manage the work requirements.
1:58:54
That's right?
Scott French
1:58:54
That would we'll need and will be eligible.
1:58:57
Right?
1:58:57
There's a couple of things going on.
1:58:59
Will say pre COVID, we averaged about forty one thousand cash assistance clients accessing childcare.
1:59:05
So that was sort of the pre COVID baseline.
1:59:08
Currently, we're at about 23,000, and we do expect for that to increase to about 63,000 between now and January of twenty twenty seven, where we think it would stabilize.
1:59:24
So, you know, that is it.
1:59:25
The increase we expect is due to a couple of things.
1:59:28
A, the caseload of cash assistance is much larger than it was in 2019.
1:59:32
And there was also a change in child care certification periods.
1:59:36
So individuals are certified for twelve months and they can remain on have that child care for twelve months even if at some point an individual dropped off the caseload, say for noncompliance.
1:59:49
So there's a couple of things going on in our model that result in the increase in need we see.