VOICE/CSEA Summit sets ambitious child care agenda

ALBANY, NY (05/18/2011)(readMedia)-- Energy filled the room as more than 230 VOICE/CSEA members gathered in Albany on May 14 for VOICE's largest gathering of members to date! The VOICE/CSEA members are small, independent business owners from across New York who have organized through CSEA- New York's leading union. .As CSEA Statewide Local 100A, VOICE brings together almost 7,000 licensed and registered home-based child care providers outside NYC. VOICE/CSEA works to build the support systems home-based child care programs need to deliver quality early learning and care to New York's children and families. The gathering provided opportunity for VOICE/CSEA members from across the state toconnect and set an ambitious agenda to address issues that affect their work and thousands of families.

Public officials and CSEA leaders recognized the valuable contribution VOICE members make every day and pledged cooperation to help VOICE accomplish its agenda. U.S Rep. Paul Tonko (D- Amsterdam); State Senator Diane Savino, (D-Staten Island), Chair of the NYS Senate Committee on Children and Families; and top CSEA union leaders including President Danny Donohue all spoke with the participants.

VOICE/CSEA members ratified on an Action Plan to protect reimbursement rate formulas for child care subsidies, secure funding at all government levels for child care, seek more affordable insurance needed to maintain their home-based operations and work to clarify and simplify regulation, rules and policies and ensure fair enforcement.

U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko listened as Melissa Allen, an Albany County VOICE/CSEA member, asked for help in sustaining a $100 million boost to the Child Care Development Fund in the Fiscal Year 2012 budget. "New York state families rely on the Child Care Development Fund to subsidize child care enabling low-income working families to keep their jobs and children to get the foundation they need to succeed in school. It will help ensure that New York's families keep earning and children keep learning," Allen said.

Patrick Hogan, a VOICE member from Westchester County asked state Sen. Diane Savino's help in maintaining subsidy reimbursement rates. Hogan said, "Fifty percent of children receiving child care subsidies are enrolled in home-based child care. Already, reimbursements do not begin to cover the true cost of providing quality child care. OCFS is completing the 2011 Market Rate Survey now. The Governor's Division of the Budget will soon decide whether to sustain current formulas. "If the standard is rolled back, it will take money out of the pocket of providers and it will make it much harder to continue to deliver high quality early learning and care," Hogan said.

Membership continues to grow as more providers see VOICE/CSEA as the means for them to make positive changes for child care in New York. More than 500 providers have signed membership cards to join VOICE since January. At the event, VOICE/CSEA members re-committed themselves to be a positive "force in New York state for children and families."

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