Cuts to a state program that helps low-income, working families to pay for child care could have a devastating effect on the region, advocates say, making it more difficult for families to climb out of poverty, putting their children at a disadvantage entering public school and tightening the budget of local child care providers.

Care 4 Kids, a state-run program funded by state and federal dollars, provides money to low-income and working-class parents to pay for child care — either through state-licensed day care, after-school care and summer programs or by paying a relative.

However, a 2015 overhaul of a federal grant that funds the program led to a serious budgetary shortfall. That led the state legislature to freeze the program to new families that previously would have qualified: low-income and teenage parents as well as families who had received welfare benefits through the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program in the previous five years.

Advocates say the effects of the Care 4 Kids freeze is just starting to be felt by low-income families, children and the child care centers that enroll them, and will worsen over the next two years.

Day care cost out of reach to working poor

For many families in the state, Care 4 Kids is one of few options that can help offset the cost of child care. It comes at a critical time, when families who are already financially unstable have the additional burden of paying for a child's needs.

Parents in need of help often become aware of the program by calling 2-1-1, the state's social service hotline run by the United Way of Connecticut, or are told they might be eligible by a local child care center.

"If I didn't have it, I don't know how I would afford to pay for day care," said Stephanie Reynolds, a full-time teacher's assistant at the Child and Family Agency of Southeastern Connecticut's Groton Early Childhood Development Center, who receives the Care 4 Kids benefit. She has been using the benefit for her 3-year-old son since he was 3 months old, sending him to the agency's New London Day Nursery.

Each family enrolled in the Care 4 Kids program in New London and Windham counties gets between $38 and $243 a week, depending on child age and care needs.

Before the program was frozen in 2016, it was open to parents making less than 50 percent of the state's median income, which in 2016 was $53,096 for a family of four. To enroll in the program, parents needed to be either employed or receiving welfare benefits through the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. Teenage parents attending school also could apply for the program.

Families generally can stay in the program until their children reach age 13. But, ultimately, the goal of the program is to give families an opportunity to become financially secure on their own. And most families find they don't need as much aid after their children start attending elementary school, said Merrill Gay, executive director of the advocacy organization CT Early Childhood Alliance.

According to the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, on average 20,034 children in 13,525 families across the state receive money for child care each month.

The subsidy still falls well short of the average cost of sending a child to a day care center in the state, estimated at $11,456 annually per child, according to The Connecticut Mirror, which cited a report released by the Washington, D.C., think tank New America. Programs that care for infants cost even more because of strict staff requirements.

Gateway to early education

Beyond the immediate benefit, the child care subsidy gives low-income families access to early education services they might not otherwise get, and that is now in jeopardy for thousands of low-income children, advocates say.

For those who can't afford day care services, child care is often a haphazard arrangement of relatives, neighbors and siblings and can be stressful for a family to provide, rather than the stable environments that child advocates say are critical for development.

"It means lots of poor children are getting pretty disjointed care and not intentional care that's designed to help them develop," Gay said.

State-licensed early education programs help children learn social skills and adapt to a school environment where they need to learn to "communicate with peers, sit for longer periods of time, be able to work with small and large groups on math and language," said Lynn Reichart, director of early childhood services at the Child and Family Agency of Southeastern Connecticut.

Programs like Reichart's "provide rich environments to teach literacy and math and science, touching on all those things," she said.

"All this stuff is individualized and based on years upon years of research on what children need to learn," said Deborah Monahan, executive director of the Thames Valley Council for Community Action, which runs Little Learners child care centers in Groton, New London and Norwich.

Beyond providing attention and education to each child, these programs also are often the first time children are evaluated by professionals for special education needs. Early intervention is important, and children are entitled to special education services through the state's Birth to Three program, but families can take advantage of those services only if their children are assessed for special needs.

"Typically, the children who are at the most risk for having difficulties with learning or special educational ... are coming from financial need," said Larry Bevilacqua, chief executive officer of Carelot Children's Center Inc., which has child care centers across southeastern Connecticut and north to Thompson. "Those are the people who need assistance that aren't getting taken care of."

Good intentions gone awry

The situation in which Care 4 Kids finds itself is, in part, the result of good intentions gone awry.

Federal funding for the program comes in large part from the Child Care and Development Block Grant, as well as some additional funding from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. A 2015 congressional overhaul of the block grant, aimed at helping families provide more continuous care for their children, included new rules that allowed families to fill out paperwork less often and stay on the program longer if a parent were suddenly to lose eligibility for any reason, such as losing his or her job, for example.

However, the changes to the grant came with no additional money to pay the state for the corresponding increase in enrollment in the Care 4 Kids program.

"That cost was going to be $33 million more than in the past," Gay, of the CT Early Childhood Alliance, said.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who had once proposed using Care 4 Kids to move the state toward a universal early childhood program, found the state in a budget crisis that made increasing the program's budget untenable in 2016.

Initially a proposal by the Office of Early Childhood would have lowered the income eligibility requirement, which would have resulted in thousands of families being kicked off the subsidy.

The office instead decided to freeze the program to new applicants, except for new applicants receiving welfare benefits. Malloy has called for the freeze to remain in place for the next two years.

Subsidy puts families to work

However, advocates say the ripple effect of the program freeze already has begun in the region, and will only worsen as fewer families enroll.

Since the program was frozen in 2016, there are 237 fewer children in New London County being helped by Care 4 Kids as of May 2017, according to statistics prepared by the CT Early Childhood Alliance. The agency estimated that the state spent $1.5 million less on child care for low-income families in New London County due to the reduced enrollment.

The subsidy often can be the difference between a parent going to work and staying home to watch the kids, day care providers say.

The Urban Institute, in a 2010 study analyzing the effects of various policy proposals on child poverty, found for an extra $1,000 a year alone in Care 4 Kids money to eligible families, the families of around 4,000 children would have enough extra income to rise above the federal poverty line. The federal government set the poverty line as $20,444 for a two-parent, two-child family in 2006, the most recent statistic available when the study was performed. The federal poverty level for a family of four was set at $24,600 in January 2017.

When taking into consideration that, with time freed up, parents are able to work more hours at their jobs and thus boost household income, the study found the families of up to an additional 8,300 children could rise above the poverty line.

With the Care 4 Kids program now frozen, child advocates fear that more parents will decide to stay home and watch their children rather than work.

"Those families who can't afford it are going to come off employment rolls," Bevilacqua, of Carelot Children's Center, said.

He said that parents may to turn to other benefit programs that aren't linked to employment, causing the state to "rob Peter to pay Paul."

Day cares in jeopardy, too

Day care providers, particularly those who cater to low-income families, say they are at risk because of the cuts.

Many local day care facilities describe a "three-legged stool" of revenue they use to stay afloat. The first is a school readiness or the early childhood education grant: money given by the state to priority school districts or school systems to provide high-quality early education. In exchange, the program must meet certain requirements, including charging families tuition fees based on a sliding scale.

Fees charged to families who can afford it are the second leg of the stool, and the third is Care 4 Kids funds, which parents in the program pay to the day care provider.

"When you begin to cut away at that third revenue stream, you are beginning to impact care," Monahan, of the Thames Valley Council for Community Action, said.

Of TVCCA's annual $3 million budget, $400,000 comes through the Care 4 Kids program.

Monahan has warned legislators that as much as half of the Care 4 Kids money to TVCCA could be gone by the end of the two-year freeze.

"We're basically holding our breath, waiting to exhale ... we'd have to really do some reworking of things" if the state aid continues to be frozen, Monahan said.

Providers expect a much bigger drop in Care 4 Kids money come September, when children in the program enter school and no longer need the benefit, with very few new families to replace them.

Dr. Susan Radway, executive director of the Riverfront Children's Center in Groton, said she recently reviewed the budget from last year and found that the center is getting around $10,000 less a month through the Care 4 Kids program, a "significant difference."

Unlike other centers, the Riverfront Children's Center does fundraising and has a network of donors to draw from, allowing it to mitigate the loss somewhat.

"What that really means is we need to increase our fundraising goals and look at other ways we can decrease costs," Radway said.

Legislators have tried to propose a way to unfreeze the Care 4 Kids program by diverting money the state receives through the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families grant.

State Rep. Diana Urban, D-North Stonington, who serves as the chairwoman of the Committee on Children, said that proposal still is alive but difficult budget negotiations in the legislature are ongoing. "We're trying our hardest," she said.

A continued program freeze will only exacerbate the achievement gap for young children in low-income families, leaving them "behind before they even start," Urban added.

"I think we're way past easy decisions with deficit ... it is really just a shame that we're balancing the budget on the backs of little kids and poor families that can least afford it," Gay said.

n.lynch@theday.com