States are quietly cutting child care funding — and families are out of options

Chabeli Carrazana

Economy and Child Care Reporter

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For the past year, families in need of child care assistance in Indiana have been sitting on a waitlist that has ballooned from 3,000 to 30,000 kids. It’s still climbing — and no one is coming off of it.

Emily Pike, the executive director of New Hope For Families in Bloomington, which cares for children experiencing homelessness, can’t remember a time when no families were coming off the waitlist. Before this year, she said, low-income families could expect to be on the list just a few weeks before they found placement at a center that took child care vouchers, which for most brought their costs down to zero.

But now, state officials project that no kids will come off the list unt