Home child care providers to get pay increases
Apr 13, 2006 2:39 PM
Victory comes after UFT, ACORN pressure city agency
City Council General Welfare Committee chair Bill de Blasio grills officials of the city’s Human Resources Administration at a March 30 hearing on child-care providers’ pay.
Thousands of home-based child-care providers stand to get increases in their city-paid subsidies thanks to the relentless advocacy of the UFT and the community organization ACORN.
“There is an African proverb — when spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion,” said UFT Vice President Michelle Bodden, welcoming the outcome. “Here is a great example of what can be accomplished by working together — not as individual providers the city might intimidate, but as an organized force that won’t be silent. It was a great victory, and an important step towards getting providers the respect and compensation they deserve.”
The city’s Human Resources Administration was called on the carpet at a City Council hearing on March 30 for its decision to send information about an increase in the subsidy to parents, rather than the providers themselves. Scores of providers, alerted about the hearing, cheered and jeered as two Council leaders grilled HRA officials on the agency’s failure to notify the providers directly or even inform parents for almost six months that an increase in the subsidy was available.
Just days after the hearing, the city agreed to send the rate-increase notices and application forms directly to child-care providers.
UFT President Randi Weingarten said, “Although this was not an easy fight, we thank Deputy Mayor KevinSheekey for listening and responding and Council member Bill de Blasio for convening hearings that allowed the inequities to be made public.”
With the UFT’s input, the city will write a new fact sheet explaining the rate increases and application process.
“The city should make it as easy as possible for providers to get the market-rate increase,” said Bodden. “We will work with them to develop a user-friendly form and fact sheet.”
At an April 4 meeting with HRA officials, the union and ACORN were also able to resolve back-pay claims of several workers totaling thousands of dollars, and got the city to investigate other cases. The UFT and HRA agreed to form a joint working committee that will streamline payment and licensing procedures to avoid problems in the future.
Last summer, the UFT and ACORN launched a major drive to organize the city’s 35,000 home-based child-care providers, who earn from $91 to $160 per child for a 50- or 60-hour week. Subsidized by HRA or the Administration for Children’s Services, they care for the children of low-income and working welfare families, looking after infants and preschoolers full-day and older children after school.
The March 30 Council hearing, at which UFT President Randi Weingarten testified, was called at the suggestion of the UFT to look into a number of problems that home-based child-care providers encounter in getting paid.
After questioning an HRA Deputy Commissioner, Council General Welfare Committee Chairman de Blasio told him, “It’s amazing to me that people had to run into each other on the street corner to learn there was a new [higher] rate.” Child-care providers in the audience responded with cries of “That’s right!” and hearty applause.
“We took a new approach,” the HRA deputy, Seth Diamond, tried to explain: notifying parents, who are the clients of the workers, with a form letter that went out in early March.
“The letters went out in March? But the rate changed in October,” de Blasio said. “Why can’t this be between HRA and the providers?” he continued. “And as someone who’s seen a lot of forms in my life, I have to tell you I got lost on this one real quick.”
“Did you have workshops on this change?” Helen Sears, chair of the Council’s Women’s Issues committee, asked the deputy.
“No!” “No!” “No!” No!” “No,” came the answers from around the Council chamber.
“We have ongoing workshops,” the deputy argued.
Sears admonished HRA: “You need to get the agency to relate to those they are serving.”
In the three-hour session, Council members learned of the hardships that child-care providers face in getting HRA to pay even the small increase in their stipend that the state authorized last fall.
Several providers testified that payments are often late, forms get lost, and the agencies that pay them, HRA and ACS, often ignore their complaints.
“I love to work with children and I take the education and care of children very seriously,” Bridget Carruth, a Bronx family child-care provider, told the Council committees, as audience members wiped away tears. “Hundreds of providers tell us stories about money that they are owed for work that they did.”
Carruth said she sometimes continued to care for children who had lost their stipends, while she was never informed of the loss by the parent or HRA. Even if the parent’s stipend is reinstated, she said, it’s nearly impossible to recover back pay.
“Many providers simply give up on recovering the back pay that is owed to them. If we are lucky enough to get through to the HRA hotline or can take time from work to visit the HRA office, we deal with staff people who are not interested in our situation.”
Asked if HRA had some process to deal with such problems, Diamond testified, “They are free to come into the office to discuss it,” as an audible groan rose from audience members.
“These are our children’s first teachers,” admonished Weingarten, who testified at the end of the hearing. “The city agencies that license and pay home day-care providers, and link them with low-income working families, could be helping. Instead they are putting roadblocks in their paths.”
Weingarten held up an alternate form — simple, clear and straightforward — that the UFT produced to notify providers of the stipend increase available.
“Why couldn’t HRA provide something like this?” she asked. But the HRA officials had left as soon as their testimony concluded and were not there to answer her, prompting more anger from the audience.
Weingarten also suggested to the Council other concrete steps that the agencies could take to improve communications and raise the pay of providers, including the creation of a streamlined, effective dispute-resolution process.
Also, she testified, the UFT has recently offered free professional development classes to child-care providers, and will soon propose to the Council that it establish a “Providers’ Choice” fund, similar to Teachers’ Choice, to help providers pay for supplies and equipment.
In response to UFT and ACORN outreach, in just three months last summer providers signed 6,000 cards saying they want the UFT to represent them.
“If I was not part of the UFT-ACORN organizing campaign, I would not have known about the market-rate increase,” Cheryl Epperson, a Queens home child-care provider, told the Council.
The organizing drive has intensified all year, with providers demanding changes in state law, better communications with HRA and ACS and improved pay.
As providers begin to finally tell their stories, people around the city are wishing them well, including fellow unionists, parents and legislators.
“The UFT sees high-quality early-childhood education as one of the fundamental building blocks for successful K-12 education, and we ask everyone’s help in assuring that the city provides it,” Weingarten said.
UFT President Randi Weingarten, with Vice President Michelle Bodden at her side, holds up a clear and simple alternative form to the HRA’s complex and confusing form to notify providers about pay increases.