In honor of the Ms. Foundation’s week of action on child care, 2012 Fellow E. Tammy Kim interviewed Lourdes Alarcon, 40, a working mother of two and member of Parent Voices, a Ms. Foundation grantee fighting for affordable and accessible child care in California. Alarcon spoke of her struggles to balance school, work and child care in the wake of her husband’s departure to Mexico under threat of immigration enforcement.

Ms. Foundation: Tell us about your background and your children.

Lourdes Alarcon: I’m from La Paz, Bolivia. I emigrated in 1992 and am a naturalized U.S. citizen. I have two children: Xavier, who is 7; and Itzel, who is 5.

Ms.: What is your work history?

LA: I lost my job in 2008 as a school secretary. A lot of deportations and hate against Latino immigrants happened then, just around the time my husband decided to voluntarily leave the country.

Nobody wanted to hire me because I didn’t have reliable child care; I needed child care desperately. Meanwhile, my unemployment expired, so I had to go back on welfare, CalWORKs.

They give you some cash aid and they try to train you and provide you with job entry. But even if I get a job, I cannot support my children at $9 or $10 [an hour], for minimum wage without health care and benefits.

I decided to pursue a career in education, to get my Associate’s degree and eventually start working again. I graduated from City College of San Francisco, and the job market was still slow, so I decided to continue. I transferred to San Francisco State University.

Ms.: What kinds of child care have you used?

LA: Being a student, I qualified for child care at San Francisco State University—only my youngest child joined. There is one teacher for every four children; the quality is amazing. They have a beautiful playground, a place to grow plants, chickens, science projects, a storyteller coming every week. It makes a difference in my child’s life. But I had to do a lot in terms of paperwork—I had to be on the waiting list for six months—and it was pretty hard on me.

My dad picks up Xavier after school. He gets $1.99 per hour—the state gives me a subsidy for someone in my family to take care of my child.

You have to pay $1200 a month for quality child care that’s licensed. [Unlicensed providers] are low paid, so you can find someone who gives care in their own home, but they have many children to meet their quota, to make some money. Sometimes it’s not quality [care].

Ms.: What have you observed about child care providers?

LA: Child care providers are, in a way, exploited. People may think that child care providers “watch” your children or change a diaper, but I think it’s one of the most important jobs because it’s taking care of the future. These are the future individuals who are going to be working and doing things, so I think that’s the most important job. Teaching and child care are usually diminished. They’re not well paid, and they’re not well recognized.

Ms.: What is your vision for child care and early childhood education?

LA: I think education goes from 0 to 18. Extra funds or extra revenue should go into education, and we should not divide the child care system from the education system.

Ms.: How have you advocated for this vision?

LA: Organizing. The budget cuts in California were horrible. They affected me in every aspect of my life. So I had to advocate for Prop 30* in order to take care of my community, my children and myself. My goal as an organizer is to light up the government officials so they make better decisions, not only for child care services but also for the whole education system.

*Proposition 30, approved by California voters in November, generates money for the state budget by temporarily raising the sales tax and income taxes for the wealthy. Parent Voices was active in this fight.

Child Care Subsidies, Early Education Still at Risk -- Congress Must Act Now

Child care is not an abstract issue. Every day, millions of families in the US rely on -- and pay for -- others to care for their children so that they can hold down jobs, pay the rent and put food on the table. For many low-income families, child care programs that are subsidized by federal and state funding, along with programs like Head Start and Early Head Start, provide the only means by which to access care -- and, consequently, to hold down a job. For them, these are the programs that make work, and any modicum of economic justice, possible. 

But across the country, these programs are in danger. Before the members of 111th Congress depart for their final holiday break, they must decide whether to continue funding subsidized child care services and early childhood education programs, or as Ms. Foundation grantee the National Women's Law Center has put it, leave hundreds of thousands of children "out in the cold."

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Act Now: Call on Congress to Preserve Child Care for Hundreds of Thousands

Back to work after Thanksgiving, Congress is about to make a number of crucial votes that will affect the economic security and well-being of women and families: chief among them the renewal of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and Head Start. CCDBG provides federal funding for state-administered child care subsidies and initiatives that improve the quality and accessibility of child care for low-income families, while Head Start provides early education opportunities to pre-schoolers.

Congress has until Friday, December 3 to re-approve these programs. But renewing at current funding levels is simply not enough. Economic stimulus funds that bolstered support for child care and Head Start are about to run out. If Congress doesn’t carry over this additional funding, over 300,000 children would be affected, dealing a devastating blow to families already struggling to survive the ongoing economic crisis.

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CA Judge Extends Child Care Subsidies; Mothers, Workers and Advocates Deliver Strong Message to Gov. Elect

Great news for Ms. Foundation grantee Parent Voices, a group that is part of a critical campaign to save child care in California: On Friday, California Superior Court Judge Wynne Carvill ordered a temporary extension of child care subsidies to low-income workers in the state -- subsidies that had previously been eliminated by cuts to the budget made by outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That's excellent news for the more than 54,000 families experts now say would be affected by these cuts -- at least for the moment. The program in question, CalWORKS Stage 3, provided individuals who had completed the state's welfare-to-work program with much needed help in paying for child care so that they could remain in the workforce; the loss of those subsidies would mean that thousands of parents could no longer afford to work -- the cost of child care becoming prohibitively expensive without help from the government.

When the cuts were announced, the folks at Parent Voices took action. Their Oakland chapter joined as plaintiffs in a lawsuit to reinstate the more than $256 million of lost funds, launched a campaign to fight back against the cuts, and participated in a well-publicized protest outside of last month's Women's Conference in Long Beach (the conference is the brainchild of Maria Shriver, Governor Schwarzenegger's wife).

Then, last week, they took their fight directly to the Capitol, where, as part of the child care advocacy community, they planned to deliver more than 5,000 signatures from mothers and child care workers affected by the cuts into the Governor's hands. Locked out of the Governor's press conference due to lack of credentials, these 20 women and their children decided to wait outside on the Capitol steps on the chance that they might be able to share a few words with exiting media after the press conference was over. According to Mary Ignatius, statewide organizer for Parent Voices, here's what happened instead:

After 5 minutes of waiting, lo and behold, Governor-elect Jerry Brown [walked] past us. The mothers began clapping and cheering and I handed him an envelope of 5,000+ signatures of working mothers and child care providers who were at risk of losing their jobs. Before taking the package he asked “Don’t you want to give this to Schwarzenneger?” and I replied, “No because you are the one who can do something about this!” He took the package and we followed him chanting “Child Care keeps California Working!”

Our leaders were so thrilled. Most took the day off of work to be in the Capitol believing that sacrifice would be worth it. We didn’t know how the day was going to turn out, but because these mothers determined they just couldn’t sit back and watch their livelihoods be ripped from them, they were able to get their message out to the Governor-elect on his first day in the Capitol.

What a terrific, unexpected outcome -- and just one more example of how Parent Voices and their organizing partners are standing strong to ensure that the voices of low-income women will not be ignored.

It still remains to be seen, of course, whether the state will permanently restore the funds that support these essential child care subsidies, but there may be reason to be optimistic: At a local campaign event before the election, the now Governor-elect vowed to restore funding for the measure when pressed on the issue by a Parent Voices leader. Here's hoping that's a campaign promise he's willing to keep.

Learn more about how the Ms. Foundation supports policies and organizations that promote economic justice for diverse communities across our country.

Fighting for Affordable Child Care: Grantees Take Action

If you don't live in California you may not have heard the news, but more than 80,000 children and their families in that state are set to lose access to crucial child care subsidies as of November 1st -- leaving many families with no way to pay for child care, and wondering how they will be able to work to support their families.

The loss of these subsidies -- also known as Stage 3 state-subsidized child care funding, and offered to parents who have found employment after completing California's state-run welfare to work program (CalWORKS) -- comes as a result of a $256 million cut made to the state budget by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Though subsidies will continue to be available to current and recent members of the welfare-to-work program, parents who have been in the workforce for more than two years will have to find new ways to pay for the child care that allows them to remain in the workforce -- or as is often the case, they'll lose their jobs.

Ms. Foundation grantee Parent Voices, a California-based organization working to improve access to child care for all families in their communities, launched a campaign to fight back against these cuts -- which will, they point out, only increase unemployment and poverty levels (particularly among single-parent households, the majority of which are women-led) at a time when exactly the opposite is needed. Let's not forget: already, unemployment among single mothers has doubled since 2007 and is the highest it's been in 25 years!

Today, October 26th, Parent Voices is participating in a demonstration to demand that Stage 3 Child Care be immediately refunded. The protest is taking place outside of The Women's Conference in Long Beach (a project of the Governor's wife, Maria Shriver) and is expected to draw more than one thousand participants.

The hope is that "The Other Women's Conference" (as the protest is known) will highlight just how profoundly these cuts will impact low-income women and children and help push legislators to authorize bridge funding to keep the subsidies at least temporarily in place. Long-term, the goal of Parent Voices and other Ms. Foundation grantees is to create policies that recognize quality, affordable child care as an essential complement to quality jobs and indisputably necessary if women and families are to achieve economic security.

For more information on today's actions and future events to save Stage 3 child care funding (including a town hall meeting in Contra Costa County at the end of the week and a children's protest parade on Saturday, 10/30) visit Parent Voices.

And if you want to learn more about the state of affordable child care across the US, Ms. Foundation grantee the National Women's Law Center will be hosting a conference call on Wednesday, October 27th (tomorrow!) on this very topic. State Child Care Assistance Policies: Current Challenges for Children and Families will address how advocates are working in their states on key challenges affecting low-income families as well as providers’ access to child care assistance.

The call begins at 3 PM Eastern; please visit NWLC's registration page to RSVP for this event (registration required).

Photo: Elizabeth Rappaport, Moore Community House

Grantee 'Parent Voices' Organizes to Save Child Care in CA

One of the great things about working at the Ms. Foundation is that you get the chance to be utterly inspired by the work our grantees are doing, often on a daily basis. Today, that inspiration emanates from California, where our grantee Parent Voices is using remarkably creative methods to counter proposed budget cuts that would seriously threaten child care programs throughout the state.

Parent Voices is a parent-led grassroots organization fighting to make quality child care affordable and accessible to all families. Because they are based in California, they have a special interest in fighting Governor Schwarzenegger's proposal to eliminate nearly all state funding for child care. From subsidies to infrastructure -- you name it, and the Governator is looking to do away with it.

Along with using traditional measures to challenge these proposed cuts (partnering with legislative leaders; building coalitions), the leaders at PV also came up with an ingenious tactic for raising awareness of the issue and encouraging more folks to speak out against the cuts.

Timed to coincide with the opening of the California State Fair in mid-July, PV created an event called the "California State UN-Fair," which drew an audience of more than 250 parents, children and child care providers from around the state. The event's goal was to spread the word that cuts to child care are only likely to result in further job losses, and to urge the state legislature to protect programs that keep parents and child care providers working. The carnival-themed event featured games like:

• "The Wheel of Misfortune" -- where, however you spin the wheel, a proposed child care cut or welfare cut results in families suffering and the loss of a job
  
• "Funding Tug O' War" -- to show how proposed cuts to health and human services impact both children and their parents
  
• "The Child Care Gamble" -- where a toy landing on either rent, utilities, gas, and car insurance determined which bill would not be paid if cuts to child care went through

The event leaders also created a soup line, where they gave out free Cup-o-Noodles to attendees. And participants were given the opportunity to take direct action on the issue of the day by calling US Representative Barbara Lee and voicing their concerns about the need for federal child care funding as states continue to falter.

Not only did the event draw a crowd in the hundreds, but more than 25 media outlets picked up the story and ran with it. Legislators and other local organizations had nothing but great feedback to share -- and most importantly, just one day later, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education, Labor and HHS (which Barbara Lee sits on), approved a $700 million increase to the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Two weeks later, the Senate Appropriations Committee increased federal child care funding by $1 billion.

What a win for PV! The problems with child care in California aren't over by a long-shot, but their creative, compelling organizing is helping to build a safer world for millions of children across their state and beyond.

See what we mean by inspiring?