by Amy Feiereisel (Community Engagement Reporter)

In New York, low and even middle income families can get help paying for licensed childcare for their children. It’s called CCAP, or the Child Care Assistance Program.

Expanding that program by making more families eligible has been a huge part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s policy agenda, and it’s received bipartisan support from the state legislature.

It’s worked. The number of families using child care assistance has nearly tripled since 2022, from roughly 60,000 kids being served to 160,000.

Families are saving money and, in many cases, parents have been able to return to the workforce because of it.

But the program is reaching a critical point: many counties have now spent all of the money they have allocated for the program, while more families apply.

That means families are now losing the assistance they’ve come to rely on.

CCAP expansion helps families and providers

Over the last few years, far more families have been able to access child care assistance in New York.

New York changed eligibility from 200 to 330% of the federal poverty level. That’s made many more low and middle-income families eligible to receive assistance. For example, a family of four making $108,000 per year, or less, is eligible for the state to cover the majority of the costs of child care.

“It’s almost like a lifeline for these families,” said Lex Bessette, the Executive Director of Tiny Leaders Children’s Center, which operates two child care centers, one in Plattsburgh and one in Malone.

Bessette has seen firsthand what child care assistance can do.

“For low-income families…it might be the difference of them being able to work, or attend school, or care for other responsibilities that they have, while knowing their child is safe and in an educational environment,” she said.

The expanded assistance has also changed the childcare landscape for providers.

The Tiny Leaders center in Malone, which serves almost 100 kids, opened in 2022. Bessette said it would have been financially impossible to do that without CCAP, because 90% of the children enrolled are covered through it.

“These are families that couldn’t afford to pay the full cost of child care,” she said. At the Tiny Leaders’ Plattsburgh center, about a third of the families are on CCAP.

But that might be changing soon, because the state is quickly spending the money it has allotted for the program.

More families means a lot more money

“It turns out that the number of families that availed themselves of this program was greater than I think the state anticipated,” said Pete Nabozny, the director of policy for The Children’s Agenda, a statewide advocacy group based in Rochester.

Three years ago, about 60,000 kids were receiving child care assistance in New York. Now about 160,000 are.

That’s because of the increased eligibility rules, and the state made it easier to apply, and increased how much providers were paid per child, something closer to a living wage, Nabozny said.

He said the current situation is, in some ways, “actually a reflection of the success of this initiative, to see that many families receiving help affording the cost of childcare.”

The problem, said Nabozny, is that the state simply doesn’t “have enough resources committed to the program to sustain it at the level that demand would indicate.”

Additional funding for CCAP is something that groups like The Children’s Agenda were advocating for during the 2025-2026 state budget process this spring, because counties were rapidly spending their allocations.

Nabozny said demand is so high for the program that fifteen counties have run out of money for CCAP for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

Counties receive their new allocations each October. The list below shows which counties have reached or are close to reaching their allocations.

1. Essex County – Waitlist effective March 19, 2025.
2. Franklin – Waitlist effective March 26.
3. Hamilton – Closed enrollment/ started a waitlist April 1.
4. Madison – Closed enrollment March 17.
5. Saratoga – Closed enrollment March 17.
6. Warren – Closed enrollment and started waitlist on March 27.
7. Washington – Closed enrollment March 12.
8. Allegany – Closed enrollment April 4.
9. Lewis – Closed enrollment beginning of April.
10. Orange – Closed enrollment April 15.
11. Wayne – Closed enrollment April 15.
12. Chenango – Closed enrollment April 25.
13. Rockland – Closed enrollment April 30.
14. Orleans – Closed enrollment April 30.
15. New York City – Closed enrollment May 1st.

When the allotment is gone, providers are left with a hard choice

Counties don’t pay for CCAP, and they don’t have money budgeted to cover what’s spent over the allocation.

That means counties are having to waitlist new families that apply until next year’s money arrives in October. Some are even having to take away assistance from families coming up for yearly recertification in the interim.

At the Tiny Leaders child care center in Malone, five families have already lost childcare funding.

“I couldn’t imagine, as a parent myself, being told that one day, and you’re whole world is flipped upside down, and now you need to figure it all out,” said Lex Bessette, the Executive Director.

That’s why the center has kept the families on. But it means the center is losing a lot of money.

“Obviously, it puts a strain on us, because if we’re still keeping the kids, then we still need the same number of educators,” she said.

Bessette said the center has asked families to pay $50 a week instead of the usual rate of about $300, to help cover a little of the cost.

But she said the business can’t do that forever, especially as more families lose CCAP.

Counties are left with few choices

The position that Bessette and the rest of the Tiny Leaders staff have found themselves in is one that childcare providers across the state are experiencing, and that more will face in the coming months.

Joe Seeber, the director of social services for St. Lawrence County, said he fears that families losing CCAP will result in “all these childcare providers, that are going to go out of business.”

Seeber said St. Lawrence County will run out of its child care assistance funds, roughly $3.8 million allocated by the state, in July.
“We have a lot of families that aren’t going to have anybody to watch their kids, and therefore are not going to be able to work,” said Seeber. “That economic ripple effect that we’ll have across the county is substantial.”

In 2022, St. Lawrence County was giving out about $80,000 in child care assistance per month. Now, they’re spending almost six times that, about $460,000.

“The amount that the county is spending on this is going up every single month and has been for the last several years,” said Seeber.

He said the money allocated by the state is no longer enough to pay for all the eligible families who have applied.

Seeber said they’ve already burned through all the rollover money the county had saved from previous years when it didn’t spend the full allocation, about $700,000. He said the county is looking at a minimum of a $1.2 million deficit next year.

Seeber is frustrated because he said counties were told the state would send more money when they ran out of their child care assistance allocations.

“They understood that we were going to exceed our allocations this year,” said Seeber. “That’s the most frustrating part of it, because, you know, St. Lawrence County did everything we were supposed to do…whatthe state mandated us to do.”

Now, they’re at a crossroads.

The New York’s Office of Children and Family Services has given the county three options for when they run out of funds: deny all families, waitlist all families, or take on the cost themselves, Seeber said.

It’s a lose-lose situation, said Seeber, because on one hand, the county knows that people losing their childcare will mean more people applying for SNAP benefits and unemployment.

On the other hand, the county hasn’t budgeted to pay for potentially millions in child care assistance.

“We are a county that has traditionally been economically depressed. That traditionally has a higher unemployment rate. This is the last thing that a rural county like St. Lawrence County can handle,” said Seeber.

Slight increase in the state budget can’t cover shortfalls

When asked about the shortfall of funds, the state Office of Children and Family Services told NCPR that as more families have become eligible for assistance, the state has “continued to make supplemental funding available for counties to ensure kids can stay enrolled, including a $400 million in the FY26 budget alone.”

That’s on top of the existing $1.8 billion budget for CCAP.

While that’s a lot of money, for many counties, it’s not enough to fully bridge the difference. For example, St. Lawrence County is set to receive $250,000 more in the FY 26 budget.

But Seeber said that’s a drop in the bucket.

“That’s less than a month more, at our current rate, with the current number of people using it,” he said.

Groups like the Children’s Agenda say the state needs to fully fund the program in next year’s budget, and that in the interim, it should give counties more discretion on how to disburse funds, like being able to prioritize continuous care or the poorest families.

Director of Policy Pete Nabozny said a lot of people have built their lives around the assistance, the way the program intended, but now a lot of those families face losing it. “It’s putting counties and more importantly, families in a really tough spot for the foreseeable future.”

The potential impact on working families and local economies
The threat of losing CCAP is a scary prospect for the families who rely on it.

Brooke, a woman in Franklin County who receives child care assistance for her two young children, said she and her partner both work full-time jobs, and still can’t afford to pay the full cost of childcare.

NCPR is using just her first name because she has a public-facing job that could be impacted by the personal information she shared.

Brooke also doesn’t have family that could provide care. She said the child care assistance makes a huge difference for them.

“To lose the funding, I honestly don’t know if that would mean we won’t be able to buy a house, if one of us is going to have to leave our current positions,” she said. “That means, I’d have to return to the service industry, so I could work nights.”

Brooke said the people using CCCAP are vital to making her community run.

“Whether they’re farmers, whether they’re working for a state agency, whether they work in the school system, what is everyone supposed to do?” she asked. “I’m hoping that someone will open their eyes and figure out how many families this will affect.”

Original article here: https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/51811/20250604/families-are-losing-child-care-assistance-as-nys-runs-out-of-program-funds