Faulty system

To the editor:

Although they are with me every weekend, my children live in Lawrence, where they attend a local daycare. As single parents, their mother and I strive together to co-parent them as much as possible but have found it necessary in order to support them and ourselves to avail social services for daycare.

The limits imposed by the state on eligibility are self-contradictory and illogical. One must make an extremely low income in order to qualify for help in paying extravagant daycare costs. But the social service system itself promotes failure and penalizes those who try to better themselves or provide more fully for their children. If one gets a slight raise, she may suddenly make “too much money” to qualify.

Social services will no longer help meet daycare costs – even though the raise isn’t substantial enough to cover the cost. Rather than a more rational sliding scale, one is completely cut off from help. I have known people who have refused pay raises, a logical rationale, because the raise would not allow them to keep their children in daycare, and there is no other alternative for them.

Such a system devalues the welfare of children, puts more stress on the infrastructure of the single-parent family, and gives preference to the monetary concerns of the state. In the courts, when there are domestic issues, the welfare of the child ostensibly comes first. This is not true when the state is involved; the state always comes first. This is a travesty.

Eric Simpson,

Lawrence