Amid persistent shortages of hard work, the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families announced a grant in September to fund retention efforts for child care across the state.
Many of those who implemented now are going public with their frustrations with what they see as a loss of cash due to an undeniable misclassification involving an unchecked box showing employee verification.
“There is confusion about the rules,” Lindsay Owens wrote in a recent email to The News Tribune. Owens is director of the Brotman Early Learning Center at Temple Beth El in Tacoma.
Owens, one of 3 separate daycare managers who reached out to The News Tribune to describe the disruptions they encountered with the application process.
The state-owned firm defended the award procedure and insisted that applicants should receive sufficient assistance in filing.
According to its website, DCYF licenses approximately 6,000 early systems and sites for school-age children across the state.
“The Workforce Retention Grant has been widely disbursed, supporting more than 18,000 verified workers, with $700 consistent with the eligible worker,” Jason Wettstein, DCYF’s communications director, wrote Tuesday in the agency’s email in response to questions from The News Tribune.
“Recipients poured in here from over 3,600 day care centers across the state,” he wrote.
Consistent $700 scholarships were to be distributed to eligible employees of a program of about $13 million open to applicants from September through Oct. 20.
The investment came from the Federal American Rescue Plan Act and was to provide “one-time pay to on-site staff in eligible positions at DCYF-licensed or qualified centers and state in-home child care providers. “
According to grant regulations indexed in a press release issued by the program, eligible applicants included licensed or qualified child care providers, who, among other requirements, had “up-to-date records of the body of workers at MERIT. “
MERIT is the state registry and the “official registration formula for early learning professionals,” according to DCYF.
Wettstein said via email: “The ongoing processes are intended for the management of culpable investments. Updated MERIT records are our way of making sure providers verify that workers are newly operating in child care centers and are therefore eligible for this subsidy. “
He added, “DCYF used MERIT’s information to determine employee eligibility. Programs entered by themselves may not be considered as requiring the employer to ensure that staff are recently hired as money and verify eligibility for grants.
Notes on the grant website: “All eligible personnel must be indexed as ‘confirmed’ or ‘verified’ in MERIT. Staff who enter alone” are not eligible. »
This component has problems for some candidates, who argue that the wording was added after they implemented it or never saw it on their application.
For Owens, he said that meant that of his thirteen employees, only one won the $700, “because I didn’t know you had to check the boxes. “
Owens, in a phone interview Monday, described his experience with the MERIT procedure in more detail.
“What I didn’t know, and many other people didn’t, is that in my MERIT formula where I can see all my employees, there’s a little button at the end that says, check to determine the job. And I just have to click on a button that says “verified”. And for me, as a director, I can’t verify myself. Our licensor is intterminated to verify me.
“And they also intend to make sure that all the other workers show up as hired here,” he added.
Licensees work to have DCYF review child care operations and MERIT entries from the state’s licensing process.
After submitting his grant application, Owens noted, “My licensor verified this with me. “
Owens partly blames the lack among licensors for deficiencies in verification, which have since become a disqualifying thing regarding the granting procedure for those that were not verified.
“Everyone is understaffed,” he said. And we haven’t gotten our license yet, which I also think they would review and make sure everyone is up to date with MERIT and confirmed. “
Owens and others argue that the main grant verification points for the MERIT Workforce Registry were replaced at some point in the application process.
“When you pass and complete the application, the terms and situations Array. . . the first indicates that I have reviewed and updated all body of workers files related to my establishment and MERIT,” Owens said. “No say please make sure all your staff is confirmed. “
Kylee Sullivan, owner of ABCDino Academy in Richland, Washington, shared an appeal letter from the academy sent to the state on Nov. 21, when grant recipients were notified of their awards.
“We verify the employee’s registration in MERIT, as required through the acknowledgment of receipt. When we originally wrote our grant application, the Eligibility segment said only, “Have up-to-date workforce records in MERIT,” the email says.
The email continued, “Now, only after seeing this as a imaginable explanation for why our staff members are not presented as eligible, do we see the phrase added, “All eligible staff deserve to be indexed as ‘confirmed’ or ‘verified’ on MERIT. ‘Self-admitted’ staff are not eligible. ” Since the application window was open when we published the guidelines, we had no explanation as to why we believed the needs would be replaced or reduced, so we did not return to the Website to look for imaginable replacements.
Sullivan’s call email says only one member of the academy has been approved.
Sullivan wrote, “Handing out $700 to a single member when all 14 are eligible workers on a technicality like this will likely create the opposite effect of retaining our workforce. “
DCYF’s Wettstein, in the agency’s statement, noted that assistance will be provided to applicants for assistance.
“We have published this grant, submitted online data and resources, and technical assistance in languages by phone and email to help applicants take advantage of those funds,” he wrote.
Wettstein added, “The requirement for body of workers records in the Professional Workforce Registry, MERIT, is not new, nor is it express for the Workforce Retention Grant. The procedure is long-standing and keeping records up to date is a legal licensing requirement. .
Owens shared screenshots with The News Tribune of others who posted articles about the grant on Washington State daycare owners, directors and program supervisors on Facebook.
“I read the regulations the day I filed my grant and nowhere did it say they had to be ‘confirmed. ‘How boring,” wrote one.
“I am the only user of 26 otherwise skilled workers who won the grant because of the technicality,” wrote another.
“I never knew what this little ‘confirmed’ picture was for. It seemed insignificant,” wrote another.
Dana Christiansen is the director of the Tree Hill Learning Center, with offices in Camas and Vancouver, Washington.
In an interview Monday, he called the scenario a “debacle. “
Christiansen said she has been with the company for 22 years and has owned a center in Washington for 15 years.
“We had no idea we intended to click on some boxes,” Christiansen said. “I have two sites, or I have about 22 workers at each site. One site, I approved for seven workers. And the other site, I approved for five.
“All the other people on my site who were granted the withholding allowance are long-time managers, landlords or workers who, at some point . . . In the last 10 to 15 years, someone came in and checked them, either me without realizing it, or one of our licensors at the time, or one of my directors.
He added: “Now, at this point, all my staff is being checked, because once I found out the problem, I went to the profile and clicked on the button that says, ‘I’m checking this person. ‘I logged in separately and clicked on all of my collaborators.
“But it’s already too far behind. “
Christiansen said she and others would spread the word in hopes of a review and eventual reevaluation, and encouraged letters to be sent to the governor and lawmakers.
She speculated that this could potentially be a lawsuit for legal action.
“We all have our original grant programs that say nothing about having to enter, verify and certify each and every employee. It was added to the FAQ later,” he said.
“I went to MERIT, visited each and every employee, made sure their criminal records are up to date, that all of their PRCs, food handlers, all of that, each and every one of them is up to date. And that’s what we were told to do,” Christiansen said.
When Owens wrote to the state wondering about the process, DCYF’s child care grant responded by repeating verification rules, in a copy of the email he sent to The News Tribune.
“Grant needs are posted on our page and on the FAQ page. Thank you and have a nice day,” the email read.
Owens said that, judging by the traffic on Facebook he had noticed about the problem, he got the impression that many sites across the state likely saw workers run out of money.
“My painters paint check after check. So having this huge amount of cash that they’re not going to get is a big deal,” Owens said.
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