The Mississippi Department of Human Services is expected to explore a funding model advocates for months have proposed as a solution to the state’s child care crisis, agency director Bob Anderson announced during a Senate Public Health Committee meeting Wednesday. 

That model would use some of the department’s unspent $156 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds to address the roughly 20,000 working families on a waiting list for child care vouchers, or coupons. Since April, families have been added to the waitlist after pandemic-era funds that had boosted the voucher program ran out. 

The agency has yet to navigate the federal regulations around tapping into TANF funds for this purpose, Anderson said. Mississippi already transfers the maximum 30% of TANF funds to the Child Care Development Fund. That’s the federal block grant that makes up the bulk of the voucher program funding, called the Child Care Payment Program. But other states have successfully channeled additional TANF dollars toward their voucher programs in a way that doesn’t conflict with the transfer cap.

“We have to be sure we identify the families as eligible, and that the money is allocated pursuant to the federal law,” Anderson said to lawmakers during the hearing. 

Senate Public Health Chair Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, then said: “You can do all that, can’t you?” to which Anderson responded he was “certainly going to try.”

Advocates from the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative, the main group pushing the state to use more TANF funds for child care, said Wednesday’s announcement was “extremely encouraging.”

“It’s a very significant development because before, they were sounding like they didn’t think it was possible to do it,” said Carol Burnett, executive director of the group. “But now they’re beginning to say, ‘Well, it’s new for us, we don’t really know how to do it’… The fact that they’re pursuing it is a very promising development.”

The voucher program is currently only serving 18,000 children – about half of what it was serving at the height of the pandemic – according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services. 

Importantly, the enhanced pandemic funding didn’t expand eligibility. Instead, it allowed the program to reach more eligible families. The voucher program has historically only received enough funding to cover 1 in 7 eligible children. 

Working parents consistently struggle to pay for child care in the U.S., where it takes an average of 10% of a married couple’s median income and 35% of a single parent’s income to pay for the weekly expense. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services deems child care that costs more than 7% of a household’s income to be unaffordable. 

The use of additional TANF funds is not the only option on the table to resolve Mississippi’s child care crisis. Anderson asked the Legislature during Wednesday’s hearing to appropriate as much as possible toward the $60 million needed to fund the child care voucher program. Anderson added, however, that because federal cuts have shifted costs to states, he didn’t include an additional child care funding request in his department’s budget request. 

“If the Legislature is inclined to fund child care in a larger amount – whether it be $16 million, $20 million, $25 million, $45 million, whatever amount – we will devote those funds to providing certificates to those families and those children who are on our waiting list right now.”

Last year, the Legislature appropriated $15 million of the $45 million the department requested to the voucher program. This year, the total amount needed has risen to $60 million due to inflation, said Mark Jones, director of communications at the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Meanwhile, the state has assumed $15 million in additional costs to run its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – another impact of the many federal funding cuts that are tightening the state’s budget. 

The increased need for child care funds coupled with the decrease in available state funds make for a difficult situation. But several lawmakers on either side of the aisle have expressed support of at least matching last year’s $15 million appropriation. 

Meanwhile, Mississippi averted an unrelated child care disaster after the Trump administration froze child care funding to five states – California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York – following allegations of widespread multi-state fraud concerns, which the states have argued the administration has not provided evidence to support. All other states were required to immediately submit new paperwork, including “strong justification” for all child care expenses, to continue drawing down federal funds. 

Mississippi successfully “defended its spend” and was able to draw down federal funds Jan. 16, Jones told Mississippi Today Thursday. 

“Because of the controls we had in place, we were able to so quickly comply,” Jones said. “If the TANF scandal taught us anything, it’s to do it right.”

Mississippi has faced shortages in child care availability long before the recent tumult on the federal level. 

Centers are closing in record numbers, child care workers are providing uncompensated care, and parents are facing impossible decisions – including anecdotal reports that several desperate parents have left their children unattended with at-home security cameras, or “nanny cams,” and were later reported to Child Protective Services. 

The only thing that will resolve the crisis, advocates say, is immediate and significant increase in funding. 

“Employers across the state need the child care industry to be stable, they need parents to have stable child care,” said Matt Williams, director of research at the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “There are always improvements that could be made to processes and policies regarding access to affordable child care, but revenue is what’s needed right now. The voucher program has been functioning in recent years pretty well, and what the system needs is more revenue.”