Currently, foster parents who are employed outside of the home in Illinois can receive daycare assistance for foster children.  This assistance makes it possible for many people, who may otherwise consider themselves unable to foster, to take in deserving children during their time of need.  This funding is invaluable to these children.

The problem presents itself when these children turn three years old.  At that time, if a child is adopted, he/she will no longer be eligible for daycare assistance.  The reasoning behind this is that at three years old, these children qualify for Head Start. The issue is that head start is often not a full day program in all areas, and the hours are such that working parents still would be required to pay a full day daycare rate to pay for the time that children are at daycare both before and after the Head Start program.

  While reunification is the primary goal of foster care, it is not always possible and a permanency decision must be made.  While many foster parents choose to adopt the children that have been in their homes for a significant period of time once they become eligible, some parents simply are not able to do this financially.  Loss of daycare funding largely contributes to a foster parent’s anxiety when making that decision for permanency, and this can negatively impact the foster children in these homes who risk losing the security and safety they felt in these daycares and these homes.  We must eliminate daycare funding as a factor that puts these children at risk for additional loss and trauma.

While children adopted from foster care receive a subsidy until the age of 18, this subsidy does not come close to covering full time childcare.  The cost of childcare for one child is astronomical, yet alone childcare for multiple children.  So many children who come into foster care come with siblings. Sibling groups can be a challenge to place in foster homes and the potential cost of daycare shouldn’t be an additional impediment to getting these children placed in loving homes that can provide a sense of permanency if needed.

A simple extension of daycare assistance for children adopted from foster care until the age of six, or until the child starts full time public school (whichever comes first), could have a positive seismic impact on many foster children and foster families in Illinois.  This would ease the anxiety of the permanency decision for many foster families, potentially allow more foster/potential adoptive families to take larger sibling groups as opposed to separating them, and allow newly adopted children to remain in their daycare setting and keep the connections that they had made there during their time in foster care.  This consistency and sense of connection is so important to foster children, and they only benefit from the alleviated stress that it would bring their caregivers to have a childcare plan in place that would not cause them extreme financial hardship.  

On behalf of working foster families in Illinois, I ask that you please consider extending daycare assistance to families who adopt from foster care until the child reaches the age of six or starts full time public school (whichever comes first).  These additional three years of assistance would mean so much to these children and their caregivers. I would welcome the opportunity to speak more with you about this vital issue.

Thank you for your consideration.