Is it worth it to work? Child care staffing shortages and high costs are keeping Quad-Citians out of the labor force. Iowa and Illinois want to solve that. – Quad-City Times

The Rock Island resident has three daughters — a 4-month-old, a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. Before they made it off the waiting list at Skip-A-Long Child Development Services six months ago, Bailey’s two oldest daughters were being watched by their grandmother, whose age and health issues made it difficult for her to be consistently available. 

Once her youngest was born, Bailey said they had to wait another two months before she could join her sisters at daycare. 

“It’s really hard to depend on other people, and ask people to give their time and wait on daycares and call three, four different daycares trying to beat everybody else getting in,” Bailey said. 

The young mom said she’s been lucky that her previous job at Hy-Vee and current position at The Arc of the Quad Cities Area has been flexible about drop-off and pickup times, but wishes she had more support. 

Bailey is far from the only parent that has struggled to find a place for their children. She knows of seven families who share her experiences.

The lack of accessible, affordable child care has been a persistent issue that has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents entering or reentering the workforce have been hobbled by the search for sparse daycare openings, made more difficult by irregular work schedules and the child care industry’s own shrinking workforce. 

The economic impact is significant. Iowa loses an estimated $935 million annually as a result of a lack of child care, according to a 2021 report from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ child care task force.

In Illinois, the Bipartisan Policy Center estimates the long-term economic impact of the child care shortage ranges between $10.6 billion and $16.1 billion, equating to between $41,730 and $63,500 per child care gap.

Iowa’s child care crisis touches every corner of the state, according to the governor’s task force, impacting the livelihoods of families, economic growth of communities, expansion of businesses and stability of government.

But efforts from local and state agencies are working to bridge the gap between child care providers, employers and parents. 

Child care industry workforce problems

Skip-A-Long Child Development Services operates centers in Rock Island, Moline, Davenport and Milan. According to its website, the Davenport location is the only one completely full. Rock Island has slots for school-age kids. Moline has openings for 15- to 30-month-olds and Milan has openings for preschool-age children, ages 3 to 5. 

Debra Brownson, chief program officer at Skip-A-Long Child Development Services, said the organization has kids on wait-lists not because the centers are at capacity, but because classrooms have closed due to lack of staffing. 

According to a March study from Wells Fargo economists, employment in the daycare sector is 12.4% below where it was before the pandemic. The study estimates that around 460,000 families are left having to look for alternative child care options. 

According to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, 4 out of 5 child care centers nationally said they are experiencing a staffing shortage.

A variety of factors have driven employees from child care centers, Brownson said, from health risks to wages to struggling to find child care for their own children. Child care centers generally have set hours, and many parents wish for a more flexible schedule. How the work is perceived can also push people out, she said. 

“We still very much are a nation that thinks that child care is just babysitting. Whereas, if I teach preschool in a community district, that’s more important than working with 2-year-olds in a childcare center,” Brownson said. “So image, if you will, has always been in place, but maybe even more so than it had been in the past.”

For many child care employees, staying in the industry comes down to pay. Brownson said Skip-A-Long is contracted with the state of Illinois to offer a child care subsidy for workers, but often they make just a little too much money to qualify for the program.

When it comes down to it, employees have to decide whether working at a child care center is worth most of their paycheck going to child care. 

“If I’m going to go to work, what can I afford to pay in child care and make it worthwhile for me to work?” Brownson said. “Because I need a car. I need gas. I need clothes. I need a lunch. … What’s leftover?”

Illinois and Iowa work to make child care accessible to all

Both Illinois and Iowa have made efforts to aid the child care industry throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 

April Berthiaume, the director of Child Care Resource & Referral of Midwestern Illinois with SAL Family and Community Services, said the state has invested more than $700 million in child care since the pandemic began to September 2021, to keep child care center doors open, employees working and parents able to afford care. 

The Illinois Child Care Assistance Program was expanded to include three months of free child care coverage until June 30 to unemployed parents who meet the necessary criteria, according to a September announcement from Gov. J.B. Pritzker. In addition to the expansion, the co-pays for participating families were reduced to $1 a month if they met certain criteria. Around 80% of the families received the reduction. 

The state also offered a Child Care Workforce Bonus program through late April.  

In January, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced she awarded $36.6 million in child care grants to 108 projects across the state. The grant funds would open up almost 5,200 slots for kids.

The Iowa Department of Human Services is offering additional funding opportunities for individual child care employees and child care centers. Employees can apply for recruitment and retention bonuses, and child care programs can apply to receive a stabilization sub-grant, which comes from $200 million allocated from American Rescue Plan Act funds. 

Iowa lawmakers are also working to loosen regulations on who can work in child care facilities and how many children they’re allowed to supervise. Lawmakers passed a bill for Reynolds’ signature that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work unsupervised and for centers to run with one staff member for every seven 2-year-olds and every 10 3-year-olds. 

However, it remains to be seen if child care centers would take advantage of the changes. 

Collaborating to create solutions

Berthiaume and SAL Family and Community Services have been working with the Quad Cities Chamber and Iowa organizations to develop shovel-ready solutions for businesses wanting to provide information or resources to their employees with children. 

Interim Chamber CEO and Chief Strategy Officer Mike Oberhaus said the Chamber’s main role is to understand the problems businesses are dealing with and connect them with the right organizations to solve them.

“With the current shortage of workforce in general, employers need to become more creative and how they compensate and create an environment that those that either aren’t engaged or minimally engaged, can fully participate in the workforce,” Oberhaus said. “Childcare is one of the potential hurdles for that.”

The City of Moline has made efforts to combat the child care shortage by facilitating the expansion of child care businesses. 

Entrepreneurs and businesses looking to open or expand existing child care facilities can apply to the ARPA Childcare/Workforce Infrastructure Forgivable Loan Program through July 31. 

Providers can apply for forgivable loans ranging from $10,000 to $50,000, with priority given to applicants who are looking to open a new child care center, particularly in low-income areas; offer more educational programs for early learning; provide child care for second, third and weekend shift workers; and more. 

Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati said the goal is to open more day care slots for young children and infants. 

The city has allocated $500,000 from American Rescue Plan funds to the program.

“We knew that there were programs at the state level that are trying to help with the cost of childcare and that our best shot at helping people get back to work that was impacted by (the pandemic) was to focus on increasing slots and helping providers that exist or that want to become entrepreneurs in this area,” Rayapati said. 

More information can be found online at https://tinyurl.com/ycxcxrch.

Rayapati also connected Western Illinois University’s Quad-Cities Campus with housing and downtown redevelopment firm Gorman & Company, who partnered to open a child care center in Moline Enterprise Lofts. Ron Clewer, Illinois market president for Gorman & Company, said the Spanish Bilingual Early Learning and Family Empowerment Lab should open this fall. 

Western Illinois University’s Quad-Cities Campus will use the center as a learning lab for early childhood students, providing more open slots for kids and invaluable experience for future child care workers. 

Clewer said most of the communities in which Gorman & Company works lack access to child care. 

“You can’t be well-employed and stably employed if you don’t have good childcare, and you can’t have good childcare if you don’t have good childcare workers,” Clewer said. “So it’s really solving two workforce issues, and at the same time providing healthy places for kids to go in a very nice setting.” 

Some ideas that have come up while trying to bridge child care and employment include creating a packet of resources for Human Resources to provide to parent employees and businesses partnering with a child care center to guarantee a certain number spots for employees’ children.

Berthiaume mentioned the example of an employee struggling to make it to shifts on time due to child care schedules, or the lack thereof. If their Human Resources department had the tools available, they could point the employee toward a day care that works better, or could discuss setting up neighbor care.  

In the end, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of accessible, affordable child care. But, Berthiaume said, businesses should do their best to provide as much information about employees’ options as possible. 

“I’m not going to say we’ve got a magic bullet, I wish we could,” Berthiaume said. “I’m sure the employees and the businesses wish that we did, but we don’t. We’re working to say, ‘Okay, let’s on each individualized basis work with your employees to figure out if we can find some sort of solution for them.'”