No More Waiting - by Clarissa Doutherd

Clarissa got pregnant at an early age and struggled to find childcare. After securing a good job and a stipend for daycare, she experienced the fallout from state budget cuts that revised the rules for subsidies and made her ineligible. When she was fired for requesting reduced hours to be able to maintain the support, she became an advocate, joining with other women to challenge the ways in which low-income families are routinely left behind by childcare opportunities.

Script:

I was 25 living in a little apartment in San Francisco running a bookkeeping business … just moving along in life getting by.

Then I got pregnant when I was ready to go back to work of course.

I needed someone to take care of Xavier when I found out the least expensive option was 900 a month.

All I could do was cry we were living on about 500 a month in Oakland which was being hit hard by gentrification.

I had no transportation and I could barely pay for diapers.

Why was I in this crisis?

Just because I decided to have a baby and wasn't rich. t

The provider explained how I could get a Child Care Subsidy.

She told me exactly where to go who to talk to how to get through the systems.

I got the subsidy and worked my way from a part-time to a full-time job as an accountant.

Then there were state budget cuts some of the rules on funding for child care changed. A

nd suddenly I was making too much money I'd have to pay $1,200 a month.

I was already paying a third of the child care costs but without the subsidy and after my rent I'd only have about $50 a month for the rest of our living expenses for food, baby stuff, transportation. Impossible.

When I asked my employer if I could work fewer hours again to keep the subsidy she turned it around on me played into old stereotypes about low income black women.

She accused me of trying to game the system.

So just like that I lost everything my job my son's preschool where he was happy and learning.

In my mind childcare is like air.

It's not something you know you need until it's cut off.

I learned that there were 5,000 women in Oakland alone mostly African-American who are on waiting lists for child care.

I sat with hundreds of them while our kids played listening to their stories of being shamed and blamed for needing help at the state level.

I'm involved in a campaign to update and raise the income eligibility for child care and we're doing organizing to increase subsidies for homeless families. We decided to stop waiting and start getting noticed we're talking about how low income women of color are disproportionately locked out of child care opportunities.

And how our children suffer because of it.

Choosing to become a mother shouldn't mean mean choosing isolation or poverty.