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Taylor Moyer has been trying to get child care subsidies ever since her oldest child was born eight years ago. But she said she was stuck in a Catch-22. In Virginia, where she lives, she couldn鈥檛 qualify for the state assistance unless she was employed or actively engaged in a job search, but she couldn鈥檛 job hunt without reliable child care 鈥� and she couldn鈥檛 accept a new position without knowing she could afford it. This problem kept her out of the workforce for years, leaving her dependent on her partner鈥檚 income.

When she recently separated from her partner, it became critical that she get a job. She was hired for a position with a nonprofit last summer, and shortly after that, she went online and applied to get a subsidy so she could afford child care for her three children, ages 2, 4 and 8 years old.

Two months went by before she got a response, she said, only to be told that she had been put on a waitlist. It gave her 鈥渁 moment of panic,鈥� she recalled. 鈥淚 need my bills to be paid but I also need somebody to watch my children.鈥� There was no way she could afford the out-of-pocket cost of child care on her pay. It costs a year, on average, for center-based care for a toddler in Virginia.

A growing number of parents have been confronted recently with a situation similar to Moyer鈥檚. Strapped for child care funding, have started waitlists for child care subsidies 鈥� or lengthened existing ones 鈥� putting new applicants in limbo when they need immediate help paying for care. Virginia is one of 14 states that have recently instituted or expanded waitlists, according to Child Care Aware of America. 

Moyer ended up asking neighbors and friends to watch her children, 鈥減eople that I normally wouldn鈥檛 have asked to watch my kids,鈥� she said. She installed some cameras in her house to make herself feel more secure. But 鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 as comfortable as I would have been had they been in a licensed, insured day care,鈥� she noted, adding that she had to work around the schedules of the people who agreed to watch her children, even though she wasn鈥檛 able to control her own schedule at work. There were some days when the person she had arranged to watch her kids canceled at the last minute, sending her scrambling to find someone else.

鈥淚t was very, very emotionally stressful, because I had never been away from my kids up until this moment and suddenly I鈥檓 leaving them at home with other people,鈥� she recalled.

Moyer had to wait four months to get off Virginia鈥檚 waitlist, she said. Then, when she was finally taken off, she had to fill out all the paperwork again, which required getting documents from her employer and finding a child care center that she could enroll her children in. It took her another two weeks before she was actually getting help, she said. 

Waiting lists for child care subsidies are not new. 鈥淚t has been true for a long time that there are not enough resources to provide subsidies to every eligible family,鈥� said Anne Hedgepeth, senior vice president of policy & research at Child Care Aware of America. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not meeting families鈥� needs with our current subsidy system.鈥� In 2021, were eligible for subsidies under state rules, but just 1.8 million received them, or less than a quarter of those who qualified. 

But the child care sector has, in the past five years, received more funding that it typically does. It received in federal COVID relief funding meant to prop the sector up, which some states to eliminate waitlists, among other changes. The Child Care and Development Block Grant, which mostly funds state subsidies, received a increase in funding in 2023 and then another increase in 2024. Some states, for their part, also devoted some of their own dollars to the sector.

Now with the billions in COVID relief funding gone, and with big state budget cuts looming due to to Medicaid and other safety net programs passed by Republicans in Congress, many states have searched for ways to reduce spending. Waiting lists have become a common tool. States are 鈥渘ot able to serve all eligible families, and they鈥檙e having to do things like institute waitlists that limit families who are coming in,鈥� Hedgepeth said. 

Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia have recently started putting at least some parents on waiting lists for child care subsidies or have significantly expanded the number of parents on their lists, according to Child Care Aware of America. Missouri also   a waitlist starting March 1. 

The number of states with waitlists has nearly doubled since early 2022, according to Child Care Aware of America. 鈥淢any on this list did not have waitlists when there were additional dollars available,鈥� Hedgepeth said, and 鈥渨ere able to serve all of the families that were applying.鈥�

This situation 鈥渄oes tell us that the funding amount that was flowing to states during the pandemic was an amount that better reflected the total need in the system,鈥� Hedgepeth said. The increase in states using waitlists as an approach to cut costs is bad on its own, but it鈥檚 also a canary in the coal mine, she said, signaling deeper troubles in the child care system.

鈥淎 single state may not be able to replace federal funding,鈥� she noted, but if it鈥檚 only spending the bare minimum without dedicating general funds 鈥渢hat鈥檚 a real opportunity for state policymakers.鈥� , for example, has instituted waitlists without investing any additional funding for the sector. 

For parents like Moyer, the impact of state waitlists can be devastating, Hedgepeth said. Many families don鈥檛 bother to go through the steps to get a subsidy or might not even know that they鈥檙e eligible in the first place. For those who actually fill out the paperwork and submit it, 鈥渨hich is often no easy task,鈥� she said, finding out that they won鈥檛 get any help for a number of months or, possibly, indefinitely 鈥渃an be really disheartening.鈥� Parents likely face impossible choices about how to make sure their children are cared for while they work. 鈥淭his is not something they have time to wait for,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey need care today for their kids.鈥� That鈥檚 especially true for mothers, as women鈥檚 labor force participation has , and many parents child care problems are keeping them from work. 

Providers, meanwhile, often suffer as well. In Indiana, for instance, the freeze in new subsidies left some providers who were counting on enrolling new infants with empty infant classrooms. The freeze, along with deep reimbursement cuts, has put them in a difficult financial position. 鈥淵our highest rates of pay comes from your infants,鈥� Dionne Miller, who runs Room to Bloom Learning Academy in Indianapolis, previously told 麻豆精品. 鈥淲e no longer have that stream of income coming in.鈥� More than 100 providers closed last September and October after the state鈥檚 changes were put in place.

On top of the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds, ongoing federal funding has become increasingly unstable. In December, the Trump administration announced that, after resurfacing fraud allegations in Minnesota鈥檚 child care and other public programs, it was freezing all child care funding to the state and reinstituting a Defend the Spend requirement for the Child Care Development Fund, which provides key funding for state subsidies across the country. With the change, all states now have to provide justification, including receipts and photo evidence, in order to draw down the money that was already appropriated by Congress. 

The administration also sought to completely freeze CCDF and other federal funding to five states, although that action has been by a judge. And the administration rescinded Biden-era rules that paid child care providers in a more stable way. 

Given all of this, Hedgepeth said, 鈥淚 would not be surprised to see more states institute waitlists.鈥� 

鈥淲e are in some ways back to the pre-pandemic conversation of the way in which child care and early learning are situated in our priorities,鈥� she added. It鈥檚 鈥渘ot receiving the full support that it needs despite what we know about its critical importance to families and economies.鈥�

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