Virginia Regulatory Town Hall
Agency
Department of Education
 
Board
State Board of Education
 
Guidance Document Change: The overarching goal of the Child Care Subsidy Program is to improve equitable access to high quality affordable child care options for eligible families, ultimately improving children’s school readiness for kindergarten. Virginia will accomplish this implementing policies and processes that: 1. Are flexible and responsive to families’ needs and realities; 2. Prioritize higher levels of support to families with the fewest resources; and 3. Ensure families have equal access to the broad array of child care options. Child care services are child-centered, family-focused services that support the family goals of economic self-sufficiency and child development by providing for the supervision, protection and well-being of the child while the parent is participating in an approved activity. The purpose of the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is to increase the availability, affordability, and quality of child care services. Toward this end, guidance and service strategies are designed to meet the following goals: 1. To provide low-income and otherwise eligible families with the financial resources to find and afford quality child care. 2. To ensure that the child care program contributes to the broader objective of self-sufficiency. 3. To provide child care to children with parents who are trying to achieve independence from public assistance. 4. To promote parental choice in the selection of child care. 5. To empower working parents to make their own decisions regarding the child care that best suits their family’s needs. 6. To provide consumer education to help parents make informed choices about child care. 7. To ensure that subsidy dollars are provided to the neediest families. 8. To enhance the quality as defined by VQB5, Virginia’s new statewide measurement and improvement system, and increase the supply of child care for all families. 9. To improve the coordination among child care programs and early childhood development programs in partnership with Virginia’s Ready Regions. 10. To design a flexible program that provides for the changing needs of recipient families and engage families in their children's development and learning. 11. To provide uninterrupted services to families and providers, to the extent of available funding, to support parental education, training, job search, and employment and continuity of care that minimizes disruptions to children's learning and development.
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9/27/22  12:50 pm
Commenter: Anonymous

Rates
 

Please consider raising subsidy rates, it hard to pay staff and keep up with rising minimum wages and rising costs of supplies, food, training etc.. Please consider changing pay by attendance being that centers charge by the week and the only source of income we receive is subsidy or private pay. Please consider changing the attendance tracking, keeping up with parent swipes is frustrating and if the parent miss the deadline then we are not paid. Please consider changing the required annual training, some of the training are repeated trainings and they are not free. Once a staff member has received their CDA or a training certificate they should not have to be forced to keep training/testing on information they have been taught and it's a burden on the staff member to continuously be charged for training each year or the center if they are covering training and development. It's hard to provide quality care on the subsidy budget, it's hard to pay quality/educated staff on subsidy budget, it's hard to have quality furniture/supplies/education on subsidy budget, the majority of our child are subsidy so please consider raising subsidy rates. 

CommentID: 147051