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Reimbursement for child care costs for Iowa foster parents can take months, leaving some families hundreds to thousands of dollars in debt. However, hard work from foster families a part of a local organization is helping make a change.

"You don't get a warning when a kid comes to your home," said Traci Schermerhorn, a founding member of organization, The Foster SQUAD.

What you do get is a new person to teach, to love, and to make happy.

It's something Schermerhorn knows well. The Ankeny mom has two boys of her own, but she's also been a foster mother for two young boys.

She loved every moment of being their foster mother, despite the costs.

"All of a sudden you need diapers, and wipes, and baby clothes, and pack-n-plays," Schermerhorn said.

Through The Foster SQUAD, Schermerhorn and the team work hard to help out foster families. Every week they supply bookbags filled with necessities to families, by giving the donations to Four Oaks to distribute to kids and their foster families.

However, this doesn't help with day care.

Iowa foster parents are completely reimbursed of a child's day care costs, only if they use a center accepting Department of Human Services rates.

"You would pay and then you would get receipts from the day care. You would send them to your DHS case worker and then your case worker would have to do what they do on their end to get it process and then a check would get mailed to you," Schermerhorn said.

The wait to receive that check could be lengthy.

"We were consistently owed $3,000 in back payments of childcare that we had paid because the process was just so slow," Schermerhorn said.

Schermerhorn says this issue isn't the case workers' faults, adding they had so much to do already in addition to this.

The Foster SQUAD quickly got to work this April, meeting with DHS director Kelly Garcia.

"She was surprised," Schermerhorn said. "She had no idea this was an issue."

By June, Schermerhon says they received a response back via e-mail. Schermerhorn says she's grateful for the quick work by Garcia, who she says was very welcoming and understanding.

"Foster parents won't have to pay out of pocket now. They'll just take their child to day care and the reimbursement will happen directly between DHS and the childcare facility," Schermerhorn said.

DHS says this new process will start on September 1st. In addition to this only applying to DHS-approved day care centers, foster parents must have a Child Case Assistance Provider Agreement with DHS.

"It will keep some foster parents who weren't going to be able to keep fostering, fostering," Schermerhorn said.

In a statement sent to KCCI, DHS Director Kelly Garcia said:

"The work that Traci and the Foster Squad are doing to support foster parents in Iowa is incredible and I’m grateful to them for bringing the child care reimbursement issue to my attention. This change not only serves to alleviate financial strain for families caring for some Iowan’s most vulnerable children, it also gains efficiency in our internal process. Improvement in service delivery for Iowans and streamlining systems are hallmark themes for our new agency, and this change checks both boxes."

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