January 16, 2014

Ms. Joan Ayers, Child Care Program Consultant

801 East Main Street

Richmond VA 23219

Dear Ms. Ayers,

I am writing on behalf of the Fairfax County Head Start Policy Council and wish to provide comments on the proposed changes to the Virginia Department Social Services, child care regulations.  The County’s Head Start/ Early Head Start program provides services to 1,857 children and their families.  Services are provided in family child care, home visiting and center-based options.  Our Policy Council includes representation from all program options and from all three programs (Greater Mount Vernon Community Head Start, Higher Horizons Day Care Center, and Fairfax County Public Schools).

We appreciate the work that Virginia is doing to promote quality early care and education throughout the state.  However, we are concerned that proposed changes will affect families and the administration of the child care subsidy program.  It is my understanding two major regulation changes involve limiting child care subsidy participation to fee families to 72 months per family and requiring subsidy recipients to register with the Division of Child Support and Enforcement. A third major issue involves the intent by VDSS to establish a state-wide fee scale, which is likely to increase the co-payment percentages that some Fairfax families will pay.  We support allowing each locality to have the option to implement these changes to better ensure that localities can meet the needs of families in their community.  

The cost of living in our community is very high and many families are struggling, and the proposed changes will present additional road blocks to acquiring affordable quality child care.  We hope that you will take these comments into consideration and allow localities to have the option of imposing the time limit on a family receipt of child care subsidy, the option of requiring DCSC registration and amending the proposed regulations to continue to allow the use of alternate fee scales to support the needs of the families in their communities.

If you have questions or would like to learn more about Head Start in Fairfax County we would welcome the opportunity to meet with you.

Sincerely,

Glendy Bowman, Chairperson