“It’s extremely stressful,” Gobert said. “Because, ultimately, if I don’t get assistance, I really don’t know how I will go about making this work … time is definitely ticking.”

According to the state Department of Education, hundreds of thousands of parents like Gobert are thought to be financially at-risk and should warrant help from the Child Care Assistance Program, the only state-administered initiative in Louisiana that assists low-income families to pay for care and education for children under the age of 4. Yet, few families actually get the assistance they need.

A combination of state budget cuts, a lack of federal funding directed specifically for child care, and changing eligibility requirements means fewer than 30 percent of families thought to need childcare assistance actually receive it. The situation is so dire that some experts say Louisiana is among the worst in the nation at subsidizing early-education costs for low-income kids younger than 4.

For Gobert, chances of getting immediate assistance may be slim.

That’s because, until this year, strict rules on income eligibility and requirements that parents work or go to school a certain number of hours per week made it difficult for many to qualify, even if they were thought to be in need of some kind of assistance. Some of those rules have changed to make it easier for parents, but the policy changes didn’t come with extra funding.

Before, the state didn’t have a waiting list because requirements rendered so many ineligible, but experts anticipate that to change this year.

Many mothers in Louisiana are in more dire situations than Gobert, who can keep her job by relying on family—for now.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 27 percent of children in Louisiana lived below the poverty level in 2014. That means a family of four with two children survived on $24,008, the income level at which a family is considered to be extremely poor by the federal government. Research suggests average families need twice the poverty level amounts to meet their basic needs, the report says.

According to a 2015 report by the advocacy non-profit Child Care Aware, the average cost of center-based infant care in Louisiana—one of the four poorest states in the nation—was roughly $110 a week in 2014. Although this average cost is among the lowest in the country, it is still an amount experts say is difficult for middle-class parents to pay, much less those with lower incomes. In New Orleans, some of the best early education centers cost as much as $275 a week.

Julie Joseph, who works at Clara’s Little Lambs Preschool Academy on New Orleans’s West Bank, can’t afford tuition at her own place of employment. Right now, her daughter goes to school there, but only because the owners agreed to temporarily give her a discount. Like Gobert, Joseph says her situation is not sustainable.