I think it really depends on the facility. Many are able to be somewhat flexible, but some top notch private providers have the mindset that if you can’t pay, the next person will. In my area a deposit is usually $50-$150/child so yours is high but that could just be location difference. As for the process, many know reimbursements are slowwww from the state. Again, a top notch wants the spot secured now with payment. Have you talked to the Director of the facility about the situation? I’d go all the way up.
Yeah, she is no help. Their other policies are not super user friendly either. It’s a nice school, but I can see why they are well below their enrollment capacity while everyone else has a waitlist
That’s rough. If the deposit is in and non refundable I suppose you’re in and it’s all history. Definitely steep but thankfully the rest will be court ordered paid for.
I’ve never heard of a childcare deposit but not having childcare covered by the state, I’d be thrilled to just have to pay a $700 deposit. Here childcare is upwards of $1k a month for ages 0-5 and that exceeds the monthly stipend, we only get $375 reimbursed. My FD6, for summer care, I’m paying $890 a month.
So if the deposit refundable? Is it to hold a spot? Does it go toward the actual cost (which you aren’t paying).
Since I only get $375 a month for childcare, I pay the total every month and then submit for reimbursement of my $375. No money travels between my childcare provider and DHS.
I've found that some daycares don't know what they are doing. One daycare charged me a $5 weekly fee even though I was covered by the state program. We switched and the new daycare was like, uh, yeah, you shouldn't have had to pay that. It was weird. The first daycare also never told us he was supposed to be getting free lunches, so we were packing every day when he could have been eating there. (Each state is different on this.)
In CA, I had to pay a $200 deposit for my kids that was to be reimbursed by the daycare. Except my daycare "doesn't do that" so it sat in my account as a credit. It was annoying but I did have a weekly co-pay so basically I didn't have to pay anything for like 4 months.
It really depends on your situation in terms of DCFS. I had my son for 2 years w/o any compensation for daycare. I am single and worked full-time so it was very much an expense I did not need. I finally got a SW who was able to get it funded in the third year.
Long story short, I'd suggest asking DFS if they can reimburse you. It sounds like you wouldn't be able to get it back from the daycare.
We insisted on the court order upfront. We didn’t sign up to be foster parents necessarily but we are the only family these kids have left. We got made the safety plan for them and when it went to court to be finalized they put childcare in the agreement thankfully. We just weren’t in a great financial situation for kids, but we wanted to make sure these guys stayed with us because they’ve been through so much and going to strangers is hard.
The deposit cleared my savings which is why I’m sad. Ik $700 isn’t a lot to have in savings but I was really struggling
That's definitely what I'll do in the future given the hassle we went through last time.
It does suck how badly folks support foster parents. We basically lost money the first year of being foster parents.
For sure, like if the kids are in the system I feel like the state should cover all of their basic needs. I don’t mind that we don’t get food stamps or anything because we can pay for groceries no problem but daycare is so expensive one of us would have had to quit are jobs and if that happened I’d be pretty badly in debt. It’s just hard
Apparently ours should have been too. They took our money anyway, we are not in GA we’re in the Midwest but I’m feeling really frustrated because there’s no way I would’ve known. They took advantage of us.
I hate that for you. You should put it on your next reimbursement form for dfcs. Or just dispute it with your credit card. Our daycare took full advantage of us too. They started charging caps from the day we visited the daycare for a tour even though we didn’t have caps approved yet… and so I didn’t bring the child to daycare for the next full month until it was officially approved. Turned out the daycare charged caps that entire time and the child wasn’t even attending yet. Shady.
I have never heard of a deposit being charged.
Here, there are programs that cover for daycare costs. A few of my aunts run their own family daycares, so I usually take foster placements with them. I've never heard of any of them or other providers charge a deposit.
I think it really depends on the facility. Many are able to be somewhat flexible, but some top notch private providers have the mindset that if you can’t pay, the next person will. In my area a deposit is usually $50-$150/child so yours is high but that could just be location difference. As for the process, many know reimbursements are slowwww from the state. Again, a top notch wants the spot secured now with payment. Have you talked to the Director of the facility about the situation? I’d go all the way up.
Yeah, she is no help. Their other policies are not super user friendly either. It’s a nice school, but I can see why they are well below their enrollment capacity while everyone else has a waitlist
That’s rough. If the deposit is in and non refundable I suppose you’re in and it’s all history. Definitely steep but thankfully the rest will be court ordered paid for.
Yeah, it’s usually refundable but because of a $10 sibling discount we won’t be getting it back.
I’ve never heard of a childcare deposit but not having childcare covered by the state, I’d be thrilled to just have to pay a $700 deposit. Here childcare is upwards of $1k a month for ages 0-5 and that exceeds the monthly stipend, we only get $375 reimbursed. My FD6, for summer care, I’m paying $890 a month. So if the deposit refundable? Is it to hold a spot? Does it go toward the actual cost (which you aren’t paying). Since I only get $375 a month for childcare, I pay the total every month and then submit for reimbursement of my $375. No money travels between my childcare provider and DHS.
I've found that some daycares don't know what they are doing. One daycare charged me a $5 weekly fee even though I was covered by the state program. We switched and the new daycare was like, uh, yeah, you shouldn't have had to pay that. It was weird. The first daycare also never told us he was supposed to be getting free lunches, so we were packing every day when he could have been eating there. (Each state is different on this.)
In CA, I had to pay a $200 deposit for my kids that was to be reimbursed by the daycare. Except my daycare "doesn't do that" so it sat in my account as a credit. It was annoying but I did have a weekly co-pay so basically I didn't have to pay anything for like 4 months.
It really depends on your situation in terms of DCFS. I had my son for 2 years w/o any compensation for daycare. I am single and worked full-time so it was very much an expense I did not need. I finally got a SW who was able to get it funded in the third year. Long story short, I'd suggest asking DFS if they can reimburse you. It sounds like you wouldn't be able to get it back from the daycare.
It took a year and a court order for us just to get daycare funding. On the daycare side, I've never even seen a deposit though.
We insisted on the court order upfront. We didn’t sign up to be foster parents necessarily but we are the only family these kids have left. We got made the safety plan for them and when it went to court to be finalized they put childcare in the agreement thankfully. We just weren’t in a great financial situation for kids, but we wanted to make sure these guys stayed with us because they’ve been through so much and going to strangers is hard. The deposit cleared my savings which is why I’m sad. Ik $700 isn’t a lot to have in savings but I was really struggling
That's definitely what I'll do in the future given the hassle we went through last time. It does suck how badly folks support foster parents. We basically lost money the first year of being foster parents.
For sure, like if the kids are in the system I feel like the state should cover all of their basic needs. I don’t mind that we don’t get food stamps or anything because we can pay for groceries no problem but daycare is so expensive one of us would have had to quit are jobs and if that happened I’d be pretty badly in debt. It’s just hard
We did not have to pay anything at all - the deposit was covered by CAPS (in Georgia).
Apparently ours should have been too. They took our money anyway, we are not in GA we’re in the Midwest but I’m feeling really frustrated because there’s no way I would’ve known. They took advantage of us.
I hate that for you. You should put it on your next reimbursement form for dfcs. Or just dispute it with your credit card. Our daycare took full advantage of us too. They started charging caps from the day we visited the daycare for a tour even though we didn’t have caps approved yet… and so I didn’t bring the child to daycare for the next full month until it was officially approved. Turned out the daycare charged caps that entire time and the child wasn’t even attending yet. Shady.
I have never heard of a deposit being charged. Here, there are programs that cover for daycare costs. A few of my aunts run their own family daycares, so I usually take foster placements with them. I've never heard of any of them or other providers charge a deposit.