Licensed child care facilities can now apply to participate in the Oklahoma Strong Start Program – a new initiative designed to support the recruitment and retention of child care employees with no-cost child care for their children through the state’s subsidy program.
House Bill 2778 by Rep. Trey Caldwell (R-Faxon) and Sen. Chuck Hall (R-Perry) made the way for this three-year pilot program, which expands access to Oklahoma's child care subsidy program for employees of child care facilities. The incentive was originally written by Rep. Suzanne Schreiber (D-Tulsa) in HB 1849.
The program is administered by the Oklahoma Partnership for School Readiness – which serves as the state's Early Childhood Advisory Council – in coordination with Oklahoma Human Services (DHS).
Startup funding for the program was made possible through federal Preschool Development Grant funding. The State of Oklahoma will assume responsibility for the funding in January, a spokesperson for the partnership said in an email.
Eligibility extends to child care employees working at least 20 hours per week at licensed facilities participating in the DHS subsidy program. They have to either meet household income thresholds of $120,000 for a two-parent household or $60,000 for a single-parent household, or have children enrolled in a facility participating in the subsidy program. In that case, income limits are waived.
Payments are made to the child care facility where the employee’s child is enrolled.
The program is operating in two phases, the spokesperson said. First, it will enroll licensed child care facilities and then allow eligible employees to apply for benefits. The spokesperson said this will help ensure the partnership can promptly issue payments once employees start applying.
The application for licensed child care programs to enroll in the Oklahoma Strong Start system is live on the partnership’s website. A separate child care employee application will be available in the coming weeks.
Programs will be required to provide a Unique Entity Identifier, which is a 12-character code assigned by the federal government to identify organizations that do business with the government. The spokesperson said this is necessary to ensure the partnership is not issuing payments to entities that are suspended, debarred or otherwise ineligible to receive federal funds.
Providers can obtain a UEI for free by registering on this website.
The spokesperson said the partnership hopes to allow eligible child care employees to access benefits within four weeks of their submission of the separate application.
“That is contingent upon a rigorous screening of applications, and making sure the facility where their teacher’s child attends child care is enrolled in [the] Oklahoma Strong Start Program – which is why it is so critical we get child care owners and operators to enroll now,” the spokesperson said.
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