Voucher system ensures safer childcare in Indiana

For families who want affordable childcare without sacrificing the quality of treatment and care their children receive, Indiana may have a solution. The state's new voucher system places importance on high health and safety standards from its beneficiaries. \nThe Family and Social Services Administration is a state agency that provides public assistance and services for Indiana citizens. The FSSA's Child Care Development Fund vouchers hold several requirements for providers to receive payments, such as CPR and first-aid training for all staff members.\nThe vouchers are in part made possible by a contract that began on Nov. 3, 2001 between FSSA and PROTRAIN, an organization devoted to providing professional training and assistance in specific improvement programs. In the contract, which will run through September 2005, PROTRAIN grants $750,000 to provide CPR, first aid and blood-borne disease-prevention training to childcare center staffs at no cost to the centers. \nLorna Wagoner, office manager for The Children's Village, a licensed childcare center, works with parents who bring their children to the center and answers questions of concern raised regularly by new or incoming parents. As expected, safety is a common issue addressed by all childcare centers. \n"All of our teachers have had background checks, PB testing, training in CPR and first aid, and so many days a year for extra training," Wagoner said of own center's requirements and policies. \nFederal law requires licensed providers to have training regardless of vouchers but holds less restrictive laws for religious-affiliated registered childcare ministries. Depending on whether a ministry receives vouchers, CPR and first-aid requirements may or may not apply. \n"Ministries do have less requirements, but we still have a state lady who comes in quarterly and checks up on everything like she would a licensed center," said Bethany Nickless, director of the Joy Junction Child Care Ministry in Bloomington, one of the 400 ministries that receives vouchers out of 637 registered ministries throughout Indiana. \nNickless said many regulations may not be checked at registered ministries as rigorously as they are at licensed centers but most ministries carry them out anyway. \nFor example, the ministry does not have hand-washing sinks in every room but makes up for this lack of facilitation by using a system that allows one worker to leave the room to use the sink while another watches the children in the room.\nCurrently, if a family wants to qualify for childcare, they must go to the city of Bloomington's Community and Family Services department where an intake agent determines their eligibility. If eligible, the family is then enrolled with a provider. The provider then submits claim forms that determine the providers' payment from vouchers. \nPolicy Consultant for the FSSA Office of Communications Kari Kritenbrink said this service sector will soon undergo some technological changes in Bloomington and throughout Indiana. In the future, families will receive electronic cards they will swipe through machines to clock their children in and out of childcare centers. Providers will have point-of-service machines allowing claims to be reimbursed electronically. \nBloomington is expected to complete the transition from paper form to the new computerized form sometime in May. \nFor more information on childcare, visit http://www.in.gov/fssa/carefinder/. -- Contact staff writer Kye Lee at kyelee@indiana.edu.