Over the last few years, Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature have greatly expanded New York's child care assistance program, known as CCAP.
New York changed eligibility from 200% to 330% of the federal poverty level, which made many more low and middle-income families eligible for childcare subsidies. The number of families using child care assistance has nearly tripled since 2022, from roughly 60,000 kids being served to 160,000.
While the state has increased the program’s funding, it hasn’t kept up with demand. Less than two months into the state’s current 2025-26 fiscal year, over half of the state’s counties have run out of funds.
St. Lawrence County's CCAP funds are all allocated
When St. Lawrence County opened for child care assistance applications on October 1, the first day of the state’s fiscal year, the county was flooded with applications, way more than the 35% increase they’d projected. The county also had to close applications in June of 2025 because they'd run out of funds for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Less than two months later, all of St. Lawrence County's CCAP funding has been allocated...and then some.
"We're looking to be $1.3 million in the hole already. And that is unacceptable," said Joe Seeber. Seeber is St. Lawrence County’s Commissioner of Social Services, which administers the child care assistance program. He spoke at a recent county-organized meeting for child care providers.
Seeber said the county will pay for that extra $1.3 million from its contingency fund, but that’s already pushing it. To actually pay for all the applications the county has projected, Seeber said they’d need an additional $4 million.
So they’re basically pausing the program.
The last day the county will take applications or recertify existing families in this fiscal year is November 26. That means they're out of money until October 1, 2026 - ten months away.
"I hate it," said Seeber. "It's unfortunate, but I don't know how to be in clearer to the powers that be in Albany. We are the 33rd county now that is doing this already this year."
A statewide problem that's hitting North Country counties hard
This is a statewide problem, and over half of the North Country’s counties have had to close their childcare assistance programs as well.
The issue is that when the state expanded eligibility, funding for this program didn’t keep up with demand.
That’s putting counties, childcare providers, and families in a really tough spot. Seeber is really afraid that this will impact St. Lawrence County’s workforce, when parents who can't pay for child care out-of-pocket leave work to care for their kids.
"We have, as a county, have the highest unemployment rate in the state outside of New York City, almost every time they do the survey," said Seeber. "And economically, we are one of the more economically depressed counties in the state, and this pushes us even farther in."
Lost funding is a roll of the dice
One of the most upsetting parts of the dried-up funding for families and child care providers is that people are losing their assistance in an arbitrary way. It depends on when they signed up in the year.
For example, a family that applied for CCAP in December of 2024 and was approved will not be recertified in December of 2025. That's not because of any fault of their own, but because funding ran out before they could recertify.
Similarly, any new family that applies for assistance after November 26 are being automatically rejected.
And counties can’t make decisions about how to fund applications, for instance, funding lower-income families first. "So much has been removed at the local level that the discretion of who is funded and who is not funded is no longer an option," said Bruce Stewart, the Executive Director of the St. Lawrence Child Care Council.
Pursuing versus funding universal child care
Stewart said expanding eligibility, which has been a cornerstone of Governor Kathy Hochul's policy agenda, only works if the state can pay for it. "Universal child care is a tremendous concept. It's not even remotely close to anywhere near realistic with the current levels of funding that we have," he said.
When asked about the insufficient funding, the New York Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) pointed to the program's expansion, noting that far more families are now being helped by child care assistance funding than ever before.
And that’s true. Since 2022, the number of families in the program has nearly tripled, from 60,000 kids to 160,000. Families are paying far less out of pocket. The expansion has been a key part of helping new child care providers open.
And before the program expansion, counties often had CCAP funds left over each year, St. Lawrence County being one of them.
Impacts of lost care on families and providers
But the chaos and confusion of partial funding is having a devastating impact, according to local child care providers.
Kim Damon is from Bright Beginnings Group Family Day Care in Potsdam. "There were people who decided whether to get a job or whether or not to get a job [because of child care assitance]," said Damon. "The child care for their few kids was more than they would have made both parents working in their job."
Christina McCarthy, the owner of Tri Town Kids Day Care Center in Brasher Falls, says three of her own employees rely on child care assistance, and so do many of the families at her center.
"I have teachers in four school districts that this is going to affect in the next couple of months," she said. "I have bank managers who this is going to affect. So the drain that this economically could put on St. Lawrence County [is huge]."
No relief coming...but a longer term glimmer of hope?
St. Lawrence County estimates around 240 families will either be denied assistance or will lose it this year because of insufficient funding for CCAP.
And there’s no immediate relief on the horizon. The next opportunity to expand funding will come this spring, for next year’s budget, starting in October of 2026.
Joe Seeber, the Social Services Commissioner, says he’s not expecting more money. "Unfortunately, I have no indication that next year is going to be any different. We've already been told that there's no more money for it."
Part of that is he anticipates the state budget will be really tight, and trying to compensate for reduced federal funding for programs like Medicaid and SNAP and HEAP. "The state budget relied heavily on federal funding. And this year, federal funding was all shut off. So there's a lot of different things at play right now."
But there are several glimmers of hope for longer-term funding.
Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York City, made universal childcare a key promise of his campaign.
Governor Kathy Hochul says it’s a key area where she wants to work with him, and her budget director said recently she wants a phase-in of child care to be successful.
And a prominent child care advocacy group, The Empire State Campaign for Child Care, recently released a new report detailing the specifics for a Roadmap to Statewide Universal Child Care, which they'll be pushing in the upcoming legislative session for the 2025-26 state fiscal year.
In the interim, thousands of low and middle-income families across the North Country and the state will have to ask themselves a question: can they afford to go to work?
