
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 23, 1994                   TAG: 9403230103
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ROANOKE WORKING POOR'S DAY-CARE AID REINSTATED

Government funding that provided child-care subsidies for low-income Roanoke families who work to stay off public assistance - funding that ran out in January, four months before it should have - has been restored.

Ruth Clark, a supervisor with Roanoke's Department of Social Services, said the agency received supplemental funding last week for the Fee System Child Day Care Services program.

"We got some more money out of the clear blue from the state Department of Social Services," Clark said. "Some other agencies that were not using their funding turned it back in."

The agencies' surplus was a blessing for 83 Roanoke families who rely on fee system funding to pay for child care while they continue with work or job training.

Fee system provides financial assistance for child care to low-income working families. Many had been on welfare and worked their way off, but now earn too much to qualify for welfare and too little to fully afford day care on their salaries alone.

The program is funded with federal block grant money and federal money for people at risk of going on welfare. That money is funneled to localities through the state Department of Social Services and the state Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood programs.

But in January, the Roanoke Social Service Department's fee system funds - money that should have carried the program through May - dried up. Increased program participation had strained the department's yearly allocation.

Parents scrambled to find ways to cope. Some who opted to keep their children in day care were struggling to make payments, Clark said. Some were close to quitting their jobs to stay home with children, possibly forcing them back onto the welfare rolls.

"I know of at least one case where a mother, who had to take her child out of a day-care center and had relatives caring for him, felt like the child had regressed some," Clark said. "There are still some people we haven't heard from that we don't know what's happened."

Clark was notified last week that Roanoke's Social Services Department would get $40,000 - enough to pay for the program until the next fiscal year's funding kicks in in May. Her office has begun notifying families, she said.

"Some of them we probably lost," Clark said. "We just don't know yet."

by CNB