NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Last summer, Derrika Richard felt stuck. She didn’t have enough money to afford child care for her three youngest children, ages 1, 2 and 3. Yet the demands of caring for them on a daily basis made it impossible for Richard, a hairstylist, to work. One child care assistance program rejected her because she wasn’t working enough. It felt like an unsolvable quandary: Without care, she couldn’t work. And without work, she couldn’t afford care. But Richard’s life changed in the fall, when, thanks to a new city-funded program for low-income families called City Seats, she enrolled the three children at Clara’s Little Lambs, a child care center in the Westbank neighborhood of New Orleans. For the first time, she’s earning enough to pay her bills and afford online classes. “It actually paved the way for me to go to school,” Richard said one morning this spring, after walking the three children to their classrooms. City Seats, she said, “changed my life.” |
Saweetie and YG Marley look cozy as they put on a lovedNew energy selfDonald Trump and Lindsey Graham are again at odds, now over abortionIn pics: Chengdu Science Museum gets illuminated to greet 2023 WorldConLithuania's Mykolas Alekna breaks discus throw record that stood since 1986Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham are again at odds, now over abortionChina launches new remote sensing satelliteChina ushers in its first WorldCon to embrace magic futureInside Lily James' idyllic childhood as the daughter of a musician and actressWorld Internet Sci