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BALTIMORE - Angry daycare providers, children in tow,took over the lobby of the Maryland State Department of Human Resources on Fayette Street this morning and demanded an immediate meeting with officials. Holding infants in one arm and hoisting protest signs with the other, the providers stated their demand. That the State process daycare voucher checks in a timely manner by instituting a direct deposit system.

The home daycare providers organized their protest through the American Home Daycare Association (AHDA), a 200-member advocacy group formed by providers and community organizers earlier this year.

"Our checks from the state come a month late and the bill collector doesn't wait that long," said home daycare provider Laressa Matthews.

Late payments are particularly acute around the holidays when personal expenses are high and voucher payments are processed even more slowly than usually, explained AHDA members.

To emphasize that point, the AHDA presented State officials with a fresh-from-the-supermarket holiday turkey.

After a brief negotiation, AHDA members were ushered into a conference room where they met with the State's Secretary of Human Resources Emelda P. Johnson and Deputy Director for Programs Calvin Street. The thirty minute meeting was facilitated by Curt Anderson, Delegate-Elect to the General Assembly, who accompanied AHDA members into the building.

Secretary Johnson initially failed to embrace a direct deposit system, noting that the administrative costs would be prohibitive in light of the State's well-publicized budget crisis. But as the meeting continued, information was passed to the Secertary that a direct deposit system is in fact being proposed as part of an information technology overhaul of the department.

Members fed other issues into the conversation, unwilling to let their opportunity to speak with the Secretary pass without a thorough airing of all complaints. Primary among them: lack of communication adn responsiveness on the part of State workers. Daycare providers testified that telephone calls regularly went unanswered and voucher checks disappeared in the mail at an alarming rate.

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Deputy Director Street seemed shocked to hear these revelations and promised to investigate. He insisted that providers should call the special consituent services phone number for quick service.

"What number is that?" asked Laressa Matthews. "I've been in child care for fourteen years and I never heard of any complaint number."

AHDA members expressed satisfaction with the meeting. Human Resources representatives, recovering from the shock of finding a dozen child-rearing, sign-waving, slogan-shouting women in the lobby on a peaceful Tuesday morning, pledged to keep working with the AHDA and its members. They refused to accept the AHDA's symbolic gift of a plump turkey, however, because it's illegal for State officials to accept gifts from constituents. So, on Thanksgiving in Baltimore, one needy family will find itself well nourished by a particularly juicy symbol of daycare providers' frustration with Maryland bureaucracy.

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