Why Are There So Many Daycare Facilities in the ‘Hood?

August 7th, 2012 - By Charing Ball

There is a concept used in urban planning community called the “Broken Windows Theory,” which holds that ignoring the little problems such as graffiti, litter, shattered glass creates bigger problems, such as violent crime, drugs and waywardness. While this concept is limited to planning, one has to wonder about the effects that separating children from not only the father but now it seems the mother too, in the most crucial point in their developmental growth has to do with the overall brokenness of families as well as the community at large?

This may all sound like conspiracy but when you consider that, in the state of Pennsylvania alone, there are 36,137 childcare providers receiving government subsidies. And according to the Brookings Institution: “Child care assistance is a key element of welfare reform because many low-income working parents, including most single mothers leaving welfare for work, need help paying for child care. Consequently, childcare was an integral part of the 1996 welfare reform debate. Since then, states have received additional federal funding for childcare through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). States are also using significant amounts of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funding for childcare. Despite these increases, there is still inadequate funding to provide childcare to all eligible families. As a result, states formally and informally ration childcare subsidies. Low-income workers that have not recently received welfare are less likely to receive assistance than those leaving welfare.”  In other words, those not working but already on welfare are favored over those mothers, who are working yet need a little something extra to get by.

Likewise, those leaving welfare also include those people going through programs like welfare-to-work, another initiative, which came out of the 1996 Personal Responsibility & Work Opportunity Act, also known as welfare reform. More subsidies were created so that those on public assistance, particularly mothers, were now enabled to leave their children with outside providers while they looked for work through a designated program. Welfare to work was championed by both liberals and conservatives as the moral response to poverty, one that touted personal responsibility over handouts and welfare dependency.

But while welfare reform has garnered praise for reducing the number of people receiving public assistance and reducing poverty, the reality is that the program didn’t really do much in the way of preparing workers, who could compete with skills for a new emerging market. In other words, people were just out of work because they were lazy. Many had complications including no education and no employable skills; all barriers in obtaining long-term sustainable employment.  Likewise, in a down economy, such as the one we are experiencing, there simply are not enough jobs to go around.  As such many participants found themselves right back on public assistance or going through another welfare to work program again. Even former President Bill Clinton, engineer of the 1996 Reform Act, admitted to the limitations of finding enough jobs within welfare-to-work program.

Of course there is always work as a daycare provider. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the childcare industry is expected to grow by as much as 20 percent by 2020.  Yet as the industry blossoms, the median income of a daycare provider is around $19,300 per year $9.28 per hour, which probably means that working mothers within these facilities must rely themselves on some outside childcare and public assistance to tend to their children.

Yet in our haste to get parents, particularly mothers on welfare, into the workforce the welfare to work and child care subsidy systems, which solely focuses on supporting work among low-income parents, it seems like there is less emphasis on ensuring that parents are able to access good quality care including early learning and literacy, basic safety, and emotional growth that supports children in their most crucial developmental years.

Recognizing the failure of the program thus far, the Obama Administration is exploring again new ways to reform welfare reform including allowing states to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.  Yet with the emphasis on working and less on actual child-rearing, thus the need for more daycare facilities, it is hard to see how these new reforms will produce better outcomes than the reforms before it. But it may also explain why the daycare industry continues to boom in low-income communities.

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  • grateful

    ^ this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    thank you for typing all of this out it needed to be said!

  • Rah Truth

    I think we all know the answer to that. The “hood” is full of single baby mamas who don’t have help with the kids. You may not like it, but it’s the TRUTH.

  • kim

    excellent post as many good points were discussed. The scary part is , most of these child care centers are simply glorified babysitters., bad ones. They don’t teach the kids anything and barely pass state requirements to operate. My nephew’s mom put him in one of these hood day centers, when he could have stayed with my mom, his grandmother (and gotten education and attention) but HAD to enroll him so her benefits wouldnt be reduced. In this place, they watch cartoons all day and always had new people working there.

  • KSocial

    There are so many childcare facilities because it is a hustle just like an other hustle. In Chicago, once you are licensed with doesn’t take long at all you can have a a certain amount of children in you home, up to 12 per adult. You are then given a food subsidy that is all tax free that you can use to not only feed the children from the daycare but your children as well. I had a friend who was doing this for a living and charging very low prices but she was able to supplement her income through the food supplement which was paid in cash. So the government pays for childcare for those on welfare and for the the Daycare workers. It isn’t a bad gig and the only work you have to do is watching someone else’s children.

  • IllyPhilly

    In pa, you get that tax free money from just sitting in a 6 hour class. It’s really IMO a hustle just like bootleg CD’s. Those places r TERRIBLE!! And anybody 18 and over can do it! I know people with records who still get paid from CCIS. How many years do teachers have to go to school?

    • PhillyGal

      Gurrrllll I know you from Philly…PREACH!!I live right in The Cobbs Creek section so I’m right between the “hood” hood and University City so I see both sides.I’ve seen grown men with foodstamps.Bishes who go to school to just to keep their Cash assistance on.Chicks gettin’ childcare and tranpasses just to go to the EARN center and chill.Philly is turning into 3rd world city!!

      • IllyPhilly

        YES!!

  • Ash

    If I lived in the hood, I think the first thing I’d want to accomplish is to get out of the hood. (Besides my education, of course)

  • ctbabydoll

    @Machelle Kawn you’re a nitwit affluent african americans do hire nannies to help look after their kids while they’re working and not all people connected to hollywood have nannies for their kids Melissa Newman’s sons didn’t have nannies growing up because of the feelings of guilt her own mother had expressed for having used nannies when her and her sisters were young and she didn’t want to repeat that. as for daycare it helps when there are no family members willing or able to take care of the kids while their mother/father is working

  • Corey

    This article is bringing to light many big issues that really need to be talked about aside from daycare. The institutional destruction of the black family by taking the males out of the picture and making the government the new daddy. The most recent, the fact that the work requirement has been quietly taken out of welfare reform. The fact that the once thought good government jobs are not so. This country was built and runs by-way-of private sector jobs. The most disturbing thing is that the welfare state was created and continues to be pushed by the Democratic Party and black folks still run to them for everything. Are they really looking out for our best interest? President Obama couldn’t even find time to go and speak at the recent NAACP conference, why, he got black folks vote in the bag already. Our communty has suffered the most since he has been in office. Time to wake up.

    • KSocial

      I don’t understand black people like you. It is disgusting to me that you can be so oblivious to the fact the President Obama isn’t just the President for Black people. He is the President for citizens of the United States. If he only addressed our issues he would no longer be the POTUS. We FINALLY have a black president in office and all black people can do is complain about what he hasn’t done for us. What do you want him to do? Do you even know? Get off your a$& and do something for yourself. He is one man and can only do so much. We as a people should be doing nothing but supporting him and his efforts to help the United States as a whole. I hate to hear about black people being so quick to ask someone to help them when we should be asking how we can help ourselves. Obama is not Jesus. He is not our Savior. He is a man who has to look out for all American citizens. Who are you going to vote for now? Romney? You are insane if you honestly think that Romney’s Millionaire A$& is going to look out for you over Obama. YOU NEED TO WAKE UP CAUSE HONEY YOU ARE CLEARLY SLEEPING!

  • Machelle Kwan

    The fact is these people are working and very hard just to stay alive with these pitiful wages that most jobs offer. They can’t afford to stay home. Most of the people who use these daycares are single mothers but some of the clients are married too. Sometimes both parents have to work and neither can care for the child when school is out. The cost of living is insane these days. Black folks need to realize that having these big families is just a liability these days.

  • Gimmeabreak78

    The idea that in order for a family to receive welfare, fathers could not be in the home is a well-traveled urban myth that needs to be debunked. After the 1960s when the job market moved away from unskilled labor (which most black men could do), to high-tech jobs (which most black men couldn’t do), black men left their communities (and therefore) their homes in droves to find employment they could do, which often took them far away from their families. The other way this myth got legs is because for welfare, there are income requirements, so while two working adults may make more money that the government would allow for welfare benefits, there was never a hard and fast rule that said that men needed to move out for their families to receive welfare.
    To the question of why there are so many child-care facilities in the hood, sadly, child-care licenses are amongst the easiest and cheapest business licenses to get, and regrettably don’t have a lot of oversight. Nearly anyone with a clean criminal record and $600 can open up shop as a child-care provider, quality be damned.

    • Corey

      If I know I can get more money, especially as a single mother, if he is not around, he gotta go somewhere. Also who would risk losing money if the social worker show up and he’s their. The welfare state has taken the responsibility of community out of community. It has given males an excuse to disregard responsibility, if government is going to be daddy and provide housing, food etc., he doesn’t have to carry that burden. Before the welfare state we made it somehow.

  • Hello_Kitty81

    Where I live at in Chicago there’s 4 on each corner. My daughter goes to one while I’m at work. There are some daycare run out of people’s homes.

  • Annie

    Its also because they have less kids…… affluent professionals with kids hire nanny’s.

    • Machelle Kwan

      Anyone with common sense and intelligence isn’t prone to having large families. We understand the practice of birth control and also economics. Affluence doesn’t have anything to do with it. And black people don’t hire “nanny’s.

      • Kayo

        Actually, the more affluent one is, the more kids they can afford to take care.

        • Seriously

          But they usually don’t have many kids, even though they can afford it. Baffling.

    • Machelle Kwan

      There are plenty of people in the “hood” with very few children. Being poor doesn’t mean you want a zillion mouths to feed, especially with no husband. Growing up in poverty should make anyone not want to end up in that situation.

  • MLS2698

    People can’t just collect a welfare check now, or, in many states, food stamps without working for it. So, in order to receive assistance, you’ve got to volunteer, or do something; and you need a daycare provider to be able to comply.

  • Rosario

    Many people of lower income aka people in the hood, do not have the luxury to choose if they could be a stay at home mom, they have to work because their wages are either the sole income or a nice percentage of it…. Hence why there are so many daycares in the “hood”…. Moms who financially secure (affluent), and or have a husband with a well paying job, can stay at home, which is why we don’t see so many daycares out in the ‘burbs’..

    • Seriously

      I worked at a daycare in the suburbs and those women would drop those kids off and go shopping or go back home! But you are right, there aren’t nearly as many daycares in affluent areas.

  • realadulttalk

    I can’t speak on any other state–but in PA when you have less than a certain amount of children–you need no license or anything from the state. Run it out of your home…it’s sheer profit with very little overhead. The problem…most of these places are not safe–you have to be careful where you send your children and these fly-by-night daycares would not even be a consideration for me.

    • IllyPhilly

      Very true

  • Anonymous

    I’m guessing, many of them are single mothers who probably have to work daytime to take care of their kids. The places where there’s less day care facilities probably has more stay home mothers, because their man can provide for them financially or have family members that can help out.

  • CrackIsWack

    well since most females in the hood get government assistance which pays for child care these daycare providers are cashing in.

    • Kayo

      Which ‘females in the hood’? Female rats? Female chickens? Female pigs?

    • IceColdBleachMartiniForYou

      And these male bums in the hood live with them for their food stamps and discounted housing since most have records and need a place to stay cuz they can’t get jobs.Ignorance is wack as well.