How will we pay for childcare?
That’s one of the first questions moms ask when they consider going back to work. It was always a question at the back of my mind.
Stay At Home or Keep Working?
I enjoy working so I knew I didn’t want to be a stay at home mom forever, but I also knew that daycare was expensive. For me, the “will I work after having children?” question was answered when I became pregnant with twins. There was no way paying for daycare for newborn twins would make any sort of financial sense so I became a stay at home mom almost by default. Two more children followed quickly after the twins. Daycare costs for four pre-school aged children would have taken up most, if not all, of any paycheck I could make so I continued to be a stay at home mom.
Back To School & Work
Things changed when my husband decided to transition out of the Army. We decided that I would go back to work, and he would be the stay at home parent while he figured out his next career move. After six years at home with the kids, I was happy to get back into the professional world. My husband was equally happy to have a chance to be a stay at home dad, and he seriously rocked it. (I’ll be forever grateful that he potty trained our youngest two kids.)
After a few months of this arrangement, my husband decided to go to Idaho State University for a technical certificate. The Post 9-11 GI bill would take care of paying for tuition and housing expenses, but we had other costs that the VA wouldn’t cover. Primarily we needed money for food, gas, and clothing. We also had to continue paying student loans from my husband’s Bachelor’s Degree.
My husband’s schedule would be full with school and homework. He wouldn’t have time for anything besides a small work study job. That meant I would need to continue to work. But with my husband at school all day who would watch our children? And how would we pay for childcare?
Our elementary school provided a partial solution. The twins were in first grade and went to school every day. My son was in Kindergarten and went to a full day of school on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Monday (it was as confusing as it sounds.) He needed somewhere to go on the days he wasn’t at school. My 4-year-old daughter was an even bigger challenge since she wasn’t old enough for public school. She’s a September birthday so she’d missed the deadline to go to Head Start. Even if she could go to Head Start she wouldn’t have been there for enough hours for me to work.
Getting Creative To Save Childcare Costs
At first, I thought I’d come up with a genius mom hack – I’d just work at night and sleep while the children were in school. This didn’t last very long. Sleeping while the kids are in school doesn’t exactly work when you still have other kids at home. Plus the night job didn’t pay as well as what I could make during the day.
Then I tried to find a job that only required me to work while the kids were in school. That was like trying to find a unicorn.
After searching for a couple months I finally found a great job that paid well, and only required me to work 28 hours a week. I even had a day off in the middle of the week so I could do “mom things” like take my children to music lessons and dentist appointments. However, I did have to work from 9-5 on the other days.
There was no way around it. I was going to have to figure out how to pay for childcare.
I’d already enrolled my four-year-old daughter in the preschool/daycare provided by Idaho State University so that I would have time to work on my job search. Her monthly bill alone was alarming. How could I afford to pay for my other children to go to daycare after school? And what would we do in the summer?
Enter ICCP
This was when saw a flier for the Idaho Child Care Program or ICCP. I’d heard the daycare mention they accepted ICCP payments, but I didn’t know what that meant at first. The flier explained that ICCP was a program that helped pay for childcare costs. The Idaho Child Care Program would pay a portion of daycare expenses for qualifying families. At first, I was skeptical that this could help us. What exactly did they mean by “a portion?” And how much paperwork was going to be required to prove that we were a “qualifying family?” Would I be slaving over a mountain of paperwork just to get $20 knocked off my bill?
I researched the program on the Idaho Health and Welfare website. I learned that my family of six had to make less than $3656 per month in order to qualify. We were certainly below that limit. I also learned that being in school was one of the things that helped you qualify for the program. Also, the paperwork didn’t seem too daunting. I could fill out the application online and I only had to take in a few supporting documents to the local Department of Health and Welfare office. I decided that even a small reduction in our bill would be worth doing the paperwork.
The Application Process
The online application wasn’t difficult. Gathering and submitting the paperwork took more time. I had to have my employer fill out a form describing how much I was paid and how many hours I worked. I also had to provide a copy of my husband’s school schedule, and proof of our monthly housing allowance from the GI Bill. I found out later that the GI Bill money didn’t even count as income, but that the program accounted for it so they had a general idea of how we were making ends meet. I also found out that the money from my husband’s little work-study job didn’t count as income either. The hardest form was probably the self-employment form where we reported the money we earned from donating plasma. It was a little tricky trying to figure out a monthly amount for that form, but it really didn’t take that long.
After all the paperwork was submitted there was a final form that had to be filled out by the daycare itself. The ICCP money is sent directly to the daycare so they have to be a qualifying daycare center. This form helped the program know how much the daycare would be charging.
I had to make a few phone calls to the Department of Health and Welfare to make sure everything had been received and approved, but honestly, the phone system for the department is pretty great for a government office. The phone line allows you to put in a call back number so you don’t have to wait on hold when the phone lines are all busy. I really appreciated that. And the people I talked to were courteous and knowledgeable.
Help Came!
About a week after everything was submitted I received a letter in the mail detailing my portion of the daycare bill for the upcoming month. I couldn’t believe the amount. It was much lower than I’d even dared to dream.
At first, just my pre-school daughter and kindergarten son went to the daycare. I paid a neighbor to watch the school-age kids at home for the few hours between when they got home from school and when my husband came home from his classes. ICCP doesn’t pay for at home babysitting unless it’s done by someone from a qualifying provider so we had to pay for her out of pocket. I’d arranged for her to watch the kids before I found out how much ICCP would pay for our daycare bill. I was okay with the expense though because I felt it was important to let the kids have a chance to go home and decompress after school.
After about 4 months our babysitter got a full-time job, and I couldn’t find anyone else who could take her place. It was time to sign the kids up for after-school daycare. And with ICCP to help us out we could afford to do it. Our portion of the monthly daycare bill for four children was less than the full cost of the bill for my pre-school daughter.
The Help Continued
The Idaho Child Care Program especially helped us out during the summer. My husband had classes through most of the summer and I still had to work so we needed somewhere for all four of our children to go all day long. We were very happy with the program that the daycare offered during the summer. Since the kids were there all day our portion of the bill did increase a bit for each of them. But it was still a tiny fraction of what we would have been paying on our own.
Thanks to the Idaho Child Care Program I have been able to provide for my family while my husband went back to school. My husband has been able to focus on school, and is going to graduate at the top of his class. He is looking forward to a very rewarding career. My career has also been helped by ICCP. I don’t know if I would have been able to work without the program paying for most of the daycare bill.
If you are wondering how you are can afford to put your children into daycare I urge you to visit the Idaho Child Care Program website to see if you qualify. I can’t guarantee that you will qualify, but it is definitely worth looking into.
