Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Is it childcare assistance or debt assistance

Ahh, a pet peeve of running a daycare. Government assistance programs. It's quite amazing just how much paperwork is required for the county I live in. In fact it's borderline criminal. And the amount of mailings they send out is crazy too. And in those mailings, trying to figure out exactly what the amount of payment will be and the responsibility of the family, well it's all in small print hidden amongst hundreds of other words.

Oh, then you finally get it all figured out and they change everything. That occurred too many times to count...every 6 months. Just enough time to finally get used to things and wham. There's the weekly charge, the copay for the parent plus the out of pocket expense, if the provider charges more than the county will pay, and last but not least, the overage or under if in fact that other figure was off. Sound confusing? Hope so because that's exactly what I'm trying to accomplish.

What really is disturbing though is that the government programs make it so complicated that by the time you do get paid for services rendered, the provider is so frustrated with the payment being late, too much in deductions, not enough payment for the services rendered that they start to rely on the county/governement to know exactly what it is they're doing. As in, their computer systems are up to speed, they have the client in that system and that system will put up a red flag if in fact the provider is charging too much. And in the end they chalk things up as the providers confusion or the parents confusion and get away scot free. So goes the government and one of many reasons why no one should ever rely on them.

In this article, it points out just where the blame will go though if the government makes a mistake. It's never their fault, it's either the fault of the client or the daycare provider and they are ultimately responsible for the debt.

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