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Day-care break helps moms Photo by Jim Craven Janine Sargent plays with her 2-year-old daughter, Kaleigh, at the YMCA day-care center in Medford Monday. Changes this month in the way the state subsidizes day-care fees for low-income families and those moving off welfare have meant lower day-care costs for Sargent and nearly 800 other Rogue Valley parents. New rules keep parents from being penalized for earning more By JONEL ALECCIA As the single working mother of a toddler daughter, Janine Sargent of Medford was spending an entire paycheck every two weeks on child care. But changes this month in the way the state subsidizes day-care fees for low-income families and those moving off welfare have cut costs for Sargent and nearly 800 fellow Rogue Valley parents. "It went down $125 bucks!" said the 21-year-old legal secretary enrolled in Oregon's employment-related day-care subsidy program. "Oh my gosh, it's so much better. It doesn't take a whole paycheck anymore." Sargent's adjusted fee for the Medford Family YMCA day-care program her daughter, Kaleigh, attends dropped from $343 a month to $226 this month. Full price for the program is $525 monthly. The decrease follows a decision by state welfare officials to spend some $7.1 million in federal welfare funds to ease a subsidy system that critics said penalized poor families for doing better on the job. The new program sharply cuts co-payments and revamps the formula for figuring costs, allowing parents to keep more of their income as their earnings rise at work. For example, the co-payment for a family of three with a monthly income of $1,700 dropped from $366 to $251. "There has been a lot of discussion for many years about how to make child care more attractive to providers and more supportive for parents," said Cydne Collins, a manager in the Medford district office for state Adult and Family Services. In addition, the new plan allows workers moving from training programs to jobs two months of child-care fees set no higher than $25 to ease the transition from welfare to work. "For the parents I see, this is money that stays in their pockets," said Karen Vezina, associate executive director of the Medford YMCA. "It's more money to pay for groceries." Of the 523 children who attend Vezina's program, 23 receive AFS subsidies. Increased state aid means the YMCA can offer financial help to more families who have no aid at all, she said. The program change came as an unexpected surprise for area child-care advocates, who were gearing up to press publicly to cut co-payments. "The Jackson County Child Care Task Force was focusing on lowering co-pays as the number one issue in the next legislative session," said Dennis Alexander, child-care coordinator for the Job Council in Medford. "Then we saw this and we said, `Oh, they already did it."' Nearly 800 local families are enrolled in the state's subsidized employment-related care programs, Collins said. Overall, Oregon provides day-care assistance to about 11,000 families. Oregon has some of the highest co-pay requirements in the nation, but that's offset by nearly effortless enrollment. In some states, clients wait up to a year to receive state day-care subsidies, Alexander said. One of the biggest improvements in Oregon's new program is a recalculation of the formula for figuring fees, Alexander said. Before, child-care co-payments went up in a series of sharp steps according to income. "In effect, a 5 or 8 percent pay increase was offset by increases of 8 or 10 percent in child-care costs," Alexander noted. Now, the costs rise gradually. "You will not get these big jumps," he said. The state will spend $7.1 million to bolster the subsidies through the rest of the two-year budget cycle that ends in June 2001. Alexander said he hopes that grateful parents will let program workers and elected officials know what a difference the subsidies make in their lives. "I'd hate to see a return to the other system," he said. That thought is echoed by Janine Sargent, who will put her $125 subsidy savings to immediate use. "I'm going to pay bills, that's about it," she said. "You pick and choose which bills you have to pay, but I can pay all the bills every month, especially now." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA