is real: Mike
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| Leny Arriola leaves her two teen children and 10-year-old alone after school but desperately needs care for her infant. |
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| When money was cut, so was Adryanna's free care, frustrating mom Karinna Fermin. |
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| Joann Girard is seven months pregnant with twins. Because she missed an appointment with Brooklyn ACS officials when her son was in the hospital, she may be left without child care for the 4-year-old boy. |
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"We've got to find other ways to get day care slots," he said. "There's no question that kids in this city - a lot of them, particularly those who aren't lucky enough to have a parent at home during the day - need some supervised activities after school. They would benefit, society would benefit."
The mayor stopped far short of promising more slots, saying the city's budget woes made it difficult to pay for additional day care and after-school programs.
"The issue is really how you pay for it, and that's what we're struggling with," he said.
Bloomberg spoke a day after the Daily News launched its Care for Our Kids campaign. The News revealed that 46,000 city children of the working poor are on a years-long waiting list for spots in subsidized care.
Without care, parents are forced to make desperate choices: leaving children home alone, dropping them off at libraries and malls - even sending them to relatives overseas. The problem is especially acute for single parents.
Recognizing how dire the situation has become, City Hall will hold a day-long summit tomorrow on the issue.
Despite the growing outrage and the long waiting list, a recent audit found more than 2,000 slots going unused at a cost of $17 million.
Part of the problem is the programs are a bureaucratic mess. Navigating the system can be a parent's nightmare.
"It is a challenge to enroll your child in any kind of care in New York City," said City Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) "We have a hodgepodge of programs."
Six schools in Brewer's upper West Side district were supposed to have after-school programs. So far, however, only two months' worth of funding has been allotted.
That leaves parents like Trisha James, an assistant teacher in Harlem, in big trouble. Her daughter, Folasade, 7, attends Public School 191 at Amsterdam Ave. and 64th St., where she is also enrolled in an after-school program.
But the program will end in November if the funding problem isn't straightened out.
"I would have to tell her to meet me in the library," said James.
Parents looking for day care who venture into the grimy Administration for Children's Services offices in Brooklyn and Manhattan often don't get answers or help.
Parents say they must take days off or give up lunch hours to meet with ACS officials unreachable by phone.
The Independent Budget Office found that while the city received a $100 million increase in state and federal funding for child care between 1999 and 2003, it didn't translate into dramatic increases in slots.
Instead, the city reduced its own contribution - from $226 million in 1999 to $148.6 million in 2004 - for child care for poor, working families. It shifted funds to pay for child care for welfare families.
CASE #1
BUDGET AX
Karinna Fermin was barely scraping by on the $250 she makes a week as a home health aide.
Now she doesn't know how she'll pay the bills.
Because of budget cuts, Fermin's 2-year-old daughter, Adryanna, lost her free slot at an E. 13th St. day care center.
"Right now I make $250 a week, and I spend about $125 a week on baby-sitters," Fermin said yesterday at the Manhattan Administration for Children's Services office.
She's trying to find Adryanna a new day care center, but the process is frustrating.
"It makes you feel like not working and staying at home and getting a check because it seems a lot easier than trying to actually work toward something and having it be almost impossible," she said.
Johnny Dwyer
CASE #2
HARD LABOR
After losing her job as a corporate travel consultant following the 9/11 terror attacks, Leny Arriola thought her biggest challenge would be finding work.
Finding day care has proven a bigger obstacle.
The 35-year-old Brooklyn mom recently notched a part-time job in a gift shop at Kennedy Airport and is taking nursing classes at Kingsborough Community College.
She is reluctantly set to let her older children - ages 14, 13 and 10 - fend for themselves a few hours a day after school.
But she desperately needs someone to watch her month-old daughter, Aiyana.
Arriola said she's gotten the runaround from the Administration for Children's Services. "It shouldn't have to be where you go through all this hoopla to try to get your child in day care," she said.
But, she added, "I have no choice. ... If I stay [unemployed] any longer, then it will be that much harder to get back into the job market."
Johnny Dwyer
CASE #3
SICK SYSTEM
Even before she lost her day care benefits, life was a juggling act for Joann Girard.
Girard, who is seven months pregnant with twins, would leave the house before 5 a.m. to get to her job as a currency clerk with JP Morgan Chase on Long Island.
Her husband would drop their 4-year-old son, Neil, at a Brooklyn day care center in the morning, and she'd race from work to pick up her son by 5 p.m.
But when Neil was hospitalized with an ear infection in September, their fragile child care arrangements collapsed.
The couple missed a routine appointment with the Administration for Children's Services while Neil was hospitalized and now face losing their child care benefits.
"They sent a letter stating that we will be out of the program if we don't [get recertified]. But when you call, there's nobody to speak to," she said.
Rescheduling her appointment has been next to impossible, Girard said. "It's always a machine and they don't get back to you," said Girard, who traveled to the Brooklyn ACS office yesterday even though her doctor has put her on bed rest.
Johnny Dwyer
Calls for help unanswered
By MADELINE BARAN and JOANNE WASSERMAN
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
It can be a full-time job getting child care for kids of the working poor.
The Daily News called the hotlines at the Administration for Children's Services seeking information and encountered what parents have long complained of: Phones that go unanswered. Confusing messages. Seemingly endless busy signals.
A reporter who called the main number, (718) FOR-KIDS, seeking information about child care in Brooklyn, was told to call the Brooklyn ACS child care office.
A call to that office went to an employee's answering machine. A second call to the same number was connected to a confusing, poorly recorded voice-mail message that gave four possible numbers to call.
"Due to the high volume of calls, we apologize in advance if all voice messages are not returned. Good day," the message ended.
In Queens, an ACS employee gave out a number to call. That line was busy for hours.
Calls placed to the Manhattan office also led nowhere. Several times, the phone was busy. Then the phone rang and rang, but no one answered.
A Bronx ACS employee gave out three numbers. There was no answer or a busy signal at those numbers.
Mayor Bloomberg's 311 information line didn't help much either. Told the caller was looking for child care in Brooklyn, the operator gave out a New York State agency number.
When the reporter called upstate, a state employee transferred her to another department where yet another number was given.
An ACS spokeswoman said employees in her office fared better than The News when they did their own test calls to 311. "We can't relate to what you went through," she said.