It has taken decades for New York City to build a childcare system for low-income working families that is nationally recognized for the quality of its programs. And yet, these crucial programs are now threatened by potential short-term policy decisions that will have a lasting negative impact...

The demand for affordable childcare by low-income families already far exceeds the usable supply.  If these families are to survive in difficult financial times, child care is imperative and a first necessity.

Providing quality child care for a low-income population that already faces educational deficits and, often, low English language literacy, poses serious challenges.  More can be done to strengthen management, increase cost-efficiency and make the most of investment in child care for preschool children.  Progress has already been made with the phased in implementation started last September of Project Full Enrollment, a comprehensive plan developed by the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) to ensure that all child care providers are operating at full funded capacity. For the past year, ACS, the advocacy community dedicated to the welfare of children and many nonprofit organizations, including University Settlement, have worked collaboratively to develop viable strategies that will support this goal while protecting the capacity of nonprofit child care providers to continue to meet the needs of their community.

Unfortunately, Project Full Enrollment is now on hold or fading into the background as ACS makes dramatic cuts in the number of children being served in the system and in the quality of services offered to these children. There are several complex and understandable causes for the large existing deficit in public support targeted to existing programs, but the City has not been as transparent or strategic as it should be in working with the non-profit sector in resolving difficult challenges.

With the economic crisis we now face, ACS, foundations, and the advocacy and umbrella agencies representing nonprofits need to play a more active and aggressive role in advancing or requiring more dramatic creative responses to challenges in the child care system. These responses could include but are not limited to: reassignment of contracts from under-performing to more reliable agencies; consolidation of child care centers under more efficient management structures; mergers and/or acquisitions among the child care providers.

These strategies are common to the private sector. The non-profit, government-funded social service sector is regularly told to function like a "business," but too often the social service sector is denied basic assumptions that for-profit enterprises take for granted.  For example, determining a true per-unit cost for a product as the basis for pricing is fundamental to a profitable business, but this most simple concept often does not apply in the non-profit sector, where social service institutions are expected to provide services and meet standards at a unit cost that has been determined externally. As a first step in sustaining New York's childcare infrastructure in these perilous times, agreement should be reached between the public and non-profit sectors on a basic "per-unit cost" for delivering quality child care, a cost that would reflect best practices on all dimensions tied to national standards, desired program outcomes, and the satisfaction of all local code requirements.

Neither budget cutbacks nor calls for organizational improvements justify the deconstruction of essential services like child care.  The system can't shrink when the wellbeing of so many families depends on it.  That makes this exactly the right time to initiate long-term structural realignments, with government and the non-profit sector both playing constructive roles.