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Come October, New Hampshire must put hundreds more welfare recipients back to work, putting pressure not only on the state, but on support networks for those new workers.

Under the new requirements, part of the federal Deficit Reduction Act, half of eligible recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families must spend 30 hours a week working or training for work.

Around 32 percent of them already do, but should the other 18 percent not meet the goal, the state stands to lose around $4 million for this year alone, said Terry R. Smith, director of the Division of Family Assistance at the state Department of Health and Human Services.

With cushioning to cover for those who don’t show up for planned work or training, an estimated 600 to 1,100 additional recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) will need to enter the workforce, bring the total working group to 1,624, he said.

Half that group has a child who’s too young to go to school, and 350 have children between 1 and 2. All of them are single parents, and all are eligible for a state child care subsidy.

Currently, those 350 parents of toddlers are exempt from work requirements, but the Legislature is examining a proposal to remove that exemption, among others.

Paying for the added child care costs of more people going back to work will cost the state about $3.5 million. Of that, $1.9 million is proposed to cover the average $75 a month parents pay out-of-pocket for child care on top of the state subsidy, Smith said.

The state has already identified that money within its budget, plus it’ll be getting a $1.5 million reimbursement from the federal government and around $750,000 in ensuing years, he said.

But all that money means nothing if there’s no spaces for kids, said Janine A. Lesser, a child care specialist with the family assistance division.

“The 10,000 question is capacity versus enrollment,” she said. “How much space is left anyway?”

She’s looking at that very question, along with ways to connect people with quality care. But her study likely won’t be complete until September, she said, just one month before the state has to meet the 50 percent participation mark.

The state won’t force people to work if they can’t find quality child care, Smith said, but fewer workers make it harder to reach the mark, a powerful incentive for the state to increase child care capacity and quality.

Those initiatives have already started. In addition to Lesser’s study, the state launched a new quality rating program called Licensed Plus, which encourages providers to meet higher standards.

It’s also developing a program so TANF recipients can meet work requirements by volunteering in a child care center, with training possibilities increasing up to a college degree, Smith said.

The cost of those supports is dwarfed by what the state stands to lose if it can’t get enough people working. By year 10, penalties could hit $58.7 million.

“I call it the death spiral,” he said.

Note: This story was a sidebar to the story "The day care dilemma."

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