Enhancing Childcare for Families Experiencing Homelessness

By Commissioner Steve Banks, Department of Social Services

In New York City, there are approximately 59,000 homeless New Yorkers in the shelter system, with nearly 70% consisting of families. Children under the age of 18 account for more than a third of the shelter population.

To address this citywide challenge and reduce homelessness that increased by 115% from 1994 to 2014, we have implemented long-overdue reforms to turn the tide on homelessness, improve quality of life, and streamline delivery of services for New York City’s homeless families.

For these families, access to childcare is crucial, as it provides parents with the opportunity to search for permanent housing and employment as they stabilize their lives. And for the 34% of homeless families who have a working adult, childcare can help families maintain employment that will help them move out of shelter more quickly.

State regulations allow us to provide parents with access to childcare in three ways: (1) licensed childcare on-site; (2) connections to licensed childcare off-site; and (3) supervised care on-site, also known as drop-off childcare.

As a part of Mayor de Blasio’s 90-day review of homelessness in New York City last year, we took a hard look at where we could improve the services offered to our homeless neighbors — and drop-off child care is an area where we are prepared to do better.

And as we clean up and transform a haphazard shelter system that built up over many years, including by closing 360 cluster sites and commercial hotel facilities, and opening a smaller number of 90 new high quality sites, we have a unique opportunity to set new standards and raise the bar for the support our homeless neighbors can receive.

While drop-off care is not meant to be a substitute for formal early childhood education and day care, it is an essential resource that provides parents with a flexible and short-term option to attend work and housing interviews, as well as appointments related to benefits and other resources that will help them get back on their feet.

That’s why we are taking steps to enhance drop-off child care at shelters for families with children, implementing more effective standards to ensure this programming is high quality across the board.

Working with our agency partners, including the Health and Education Departments, we are proposing additional regulations this week that will improve drop-off care by enhancing on-site staffing and strengthening health, safety, and physical space guidelines.

With these regulations, we are adding training in child development and standardizing staff-to-child ratios, increasing that ratio for infants and toddlers so that homeless children receive the attention and supervision they deserve in drop-off childcare settings. And we are also establishing strict expectations for physical spaces, including health and safety standards, like window guards and sprinklers, to ensure that drop-off childcare spaces are appropriate and our young clients are safe in the event of an emergency. These are the same standards applied to regulated day care programs throughout New York City — we should provide no less to homeless children.

We are very grateful to have many outstanding not-for-profit partners who have developed special programs for providing care for children while their families are in shelter. As we roll out these changes, we will assist those partners who wish to offer enhanced drop-off care with implementation and we welcome their suggestions for enhancements for our new approach.

And as we move forward with the Mayor’s plan for turning the tide on homelessness, we will work closely with all of our not-for-profit partners so that all of our families are covered, with access to high-quality childcare, whether on-site or off.

Thanks in large part to the City’s unprecedented investment in and expansion of early childhood learning programs, parents now have access to more childcare opportunities citywide than ever before. All shelters will continue to have linkage agreements with neighborhood day care programs, including referrals to off-site licensed care, Pre-K for All, ACS’ EarlyLearn, other licensed day care programs, and now 3-K for All — and we are committed to strengthening those connections.

Giving families and children an opportunity to succeed is our top priority in New York City. For homeless families, that means residing at a shelter that enables and empowers you to get back on your feet. Ensuring these families have the opportunity to utilize high-quality drop-off care while they rebuild their lives is a common sense step in the right direction.

Developed in close collaboration with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Education, and the Administration for Children’s Services, we believe these long-overdue reforms will help us go further in delivering that opportunity.