• Introductions

• Thanks for coming

• My name is…………..

• The Action Alliance for Virginia’s Children and Youth and a group of local community organizations are arranging these meetings. We’re doing these discussions around the state because we want to hear directly from parents about their experiences with getting health insurance and day care for their children.

• Confidentiality….. only interested in finding out about your experiences so that we can push for changes that will help parents like yourself.
  
• The Muskie School at the University of Southern Maine will be writing report. Offer to send copy
  
• Tape recording
  
• One way mirror
  
• …will be taking notes, …will be observing.
  • researchers from the University of Southern Maine.

We’ll spend most of our time talking about day care, then health insurance.

Define what we mean by day care,

Care by someone else while you work or go to school: Includes:

• Friend, relative or neighbor either in your home or in theirs
• Day care centers
• Head Start
• Family Day Care Homes
• Nursery Schools or Preschools
• After school programs

1.) Who here has a child who is taken care of by someone else while you work?

• Did anyone help you find the care? Who was that? Tell me more.
• What are some of the things that led you to make your choice of day care?

2.) Have you had to change your children’s care?

• Think about the last year. How many times have you had to change your children’s care?
• What were some of the reasons?

3.) Are the care arrangements you’ve chosen for your children meeting your needs?
Listen for:
Cost
Transportation problems
Reliability of provider
Hours to match work hours
Length of day door-to-door

4.) Is the child care you have chosen for your children meeting their needs?

5. ) Did you know that there is help for some parents in paying for certain types of day care ? Have you heard about that?

• How/when did you hear about it?
• Who have you heard it’s for?
• Have you ever tried to get that help? What were your experiences with that?
• If you could get that help, would you be interested?
• If more of the cost of your day care was paid for through a program to assist parents would that change things for you? If so, how?

6.) In thinking about where your kids are now, what things that your children are getting do you like? Is there anything you’d like to change?

7.) What do you want most for your children while in day care?

Now let’s spend the rest of the time talking about health insurance for your kids.

1.) Have you ever heard of Medicaid? How about the child health insurance program, CMSIP?

• How/when did you hear of Medicaid? of CMSIP??
• Who have you heard these programs are for? (Make sure they answer for both programs)

2.) Have any of you tried to get this help? Can you tell me about your experiences?

3.) For those of you who haven’t tried to enroll your kids, can you give me some reasons why you haven’t?

If there was a single thing you could change to make it easier for parents to get help with health insurance and day care for their kids what would it be? (GET SPECIFICS)

NOTE: For the child health insurance and child care subsidy questions listen for:
Location/hours of office
Confusion about filling out the form
Paperwork/documentation requirements
Treatment by workers
Lack of follow up
Not eligible
Eligibility requirements such as child support cooperation
Language barriers
Legal status
Stigma/ don’t want a “handout”
Inconvenience
Bad rap or misconceptions about eligibility on the street
Don’t need it

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