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standing finance committees of the NM Legislature. The LFC does not assume
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in
|
SPONSOR |
Lopez |
DATE TYPED |
|
HB |
|
||
|
SHORT
TITLE |
At-Home Infant Care Act |
SB |
553/aSPAC |
||||
|
|
ANALYST |
|
|||||
APPROPRIATION
|
Appropriation
Contained |
Estimated
Additional Impact |
Recurring or
Non-Rec |
Fund Affected |
||
|
FY04 |
FY05 |
FY04 |
FY05 |
||
|
|
$180.0 |
|
|
Recurring |
TANF Maintenance
of Effort |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(Parenthesis
( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)
Relates
to Appropriation in the General Appropriation Act
LFC
Files
Responses
Received From
Department
of Health
No
Responses Received From
Children,
Youth and Families
Human
Services Department
SUMMARY
Synopsis of SPAC Amendment
The
Senate Public Affairs Committee Amendment provides for the following:
q Changes the definition
of an “infant” to a child who is 23 months of age or less. The original bill defined an infant as a
child who was 24 months or less.
q Clarifies language
relevant to the reimbursement rates for at home infant care providers. These
providers will be paid at the rate that registered child care providers are currently
reimbursed.
q Make clears that at-home
infant care is considered a work activity to the extent possible and within the
limits of the federal law for purposes of the NM Works Act.
Synopsis of Original Bill
Senate Bill 553 appropriates $180
thousand from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) maintenance of
effort to Children Youth and Families Department. The bill,
the At-Home Infant Care Act, would direct the Children Youth and Families
Department (CYFD) to initiate an at-home infant care pilot program to pay for
50 families to have a parent provided care for an infant at home for up to
24-months as a maximum lifetime benefit. The eligibility for the families is
specified and CYFD is urged to have a mixture of urban and rural families.
While participating in this program, adult members of the family would be
supported to receive parenting and early childcare development training as
required by CYFD. Further, the parenting
effort for those selected for the pilot project would meet the work requirement
for the New Mexico Works Act and temporary assistance to needy families. The bill specifies how the benefit rate
should be determined and what additional assistance programs the participating
families can and cannot continue to receive.
Significant Issues
The
Department of Health reports:
This pilot program would
allow the participant to stay at home to care for the infant as well as any
other toddlers/preschoolers at home and receive benefits of parenting and early
child education training. This program could promote parent involvement,
parenting skills, as well as enhance commitment to family and social behaviors.
Characteristics, such as, confidence, curiosity,
sense of self, self-control, capacity to communicate and cooperate are largely
developed in the first three years of life and lay the foundation on “how to
learn”. How parents in early childhood
programs encourage or ignore the development of these main attributes can
determine a child’s success or failure in life.
Effective early
childhood programs take into account three areas of potential vulnerability: health, cognitive achievement, and social and
emotional development. Factors to consider are gender, race/ethnicity, parental
education, household income, country of
birth, family structure, and neighborhood environment. Vulnerable children
require different levels of services depending upon their different needs.
Support for parents in early childhood programs must include considerations of
cultural and geographic diversity, and diverse family values, as well as training in adaptive modifications to
provide them equal access to the various educational programs.
FISCAL
IMPLICATIONS
The
appropriation of $180 thousand contained in this bill is a recurring expense to
the TANF
maintenance of effort. Any unexpended or
unencumbered balance remaining at the end of Fiscal Year 2005 shall revert to
the TANF funds.
TECHNICAL
ISSUES
All TANF funds are appropriated in the current
version of the general appropriation act.
Any change would require reallocation of the current funding levels.
MW/njw:yr:lg