LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Back-to-school for children in the Clark County School District means back to work for thousands of teachers, too.
One Las Vegas Valley teacher and mother, who wanted to remain anonymous, tells FOX5 the financial assistance she relied on for childcare has been delayed.
“I’m just pulling my hair out looking for solutions,” she said.
As this mother returns to teach at a high school, she says her 10-year-old son has nowhere to go before his elementary school starts a couple of hours later. Last year, she says she would drop her son off at a daycare on her way to work, but, she says the funding she was expecting to receive to help pay for that daycare is delayed.
“Daycare for my son is about $1,300 and I cannot afford it,” she says. “We barely make ends meet. We’re struggling really bad.”
This mother says she received funding through LV Urban League, a valley non-profit. For years, it’s role was to distribute federal funding to subsidize child care, according to chairman of the Board, Tony Bourne.
Now, the state is taking over and distributing federal funding directly to families as of last month.
“By pulling this in the house, we’re going to hopefully free up some of those dollars to help eventually cover some additional kids,” said Lisa Swearingen, a deputy administrator with the Division of Social Services over Child and Administration Services.
Swearingen says there is a transition phase while the cases switch over.
“They had, I want to say 70, 80 staff working these cases, we have less than 20 staff working these cases,” Swearingen says.
She says they’ve discovered multiple emails from the same families could be filtered into spam folders and temporarily missed. She is asking families to wait 10 days before sending an additional email, and to write “follow up” in the subject line, so previous emails can be located and grouped together.
Parents can reach out to [email protected] with questions about the status of their case.
“We are really dedicated to helping Nevada families, and getting them the childcare that they need,” Swearingen says.
Meanwhile, this mother says she is hoping sharing her story informs other parents in the same position.
“Maybe someone from the state of Nevada will see this and be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know this was this severe, maybe we can speed this process up,’” she says.
Bourne says others have reached out to LV Urban League saying their payment is delayed, too. He says, they are redirecting those families to the state, because the program is no longer in their hands.
Parents can find updates to the state’s Child Care and Development Program, and subscribe to a dedicated email listserv here.
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