Almost 400 children in Cabarrus County may lose access to a day care program designed to help their parents keep working.
The Cabarrus Child Care Subsidy program helps low-income families pay for day care so the parents have more time to maintain jobs or go to college. It currently serves about 1,500 children.
But county Director of Social Services Ben Rose said it can’t afford to keep serving that many because of federal and state budget cuts.
“Part of the challenge, too, is that we’ve had increased demand over the past year,” Rose said.
He said that’s actually a good sign for the county – it means more people are getting back to work. But the program can’t help all of them.
“So when you get people working any kind of a job, they will be calling us to say, ‘Can we get child care?’” Rose said. “And of course now we’re having to put people on a waiting list, so our waiting list will start to grow as we have to make these cuts.”
Rose said almost 400 children may lose the day care subsidy. But that’s the worst case scenario – he says there probably won’t be that many cuts because each month some families no longer need the program.
The state has to approve the cuts, and Rose expects that to happen this week. Then the county will send 30-day notices to families who’ll need to find another way to pay for their kids’ day care.