The lack of available child care in Moniteau County brought two organizations together.
Central Missouri Community Action (CMCA) will work with the Moniteau Regional Economic Development Council to help establish available child care in the county.
Moniteau County entities gathered in California City Hall for another installment of Central Missouri Community Action's (CMCA) "Show Me Strong Communities" program. This is the third meeting to take place in California over the last few months.
"Show Me Strong Communities" is a community assessment program focusing on areas of improvement within Missouri counties. During the organization's first meeting in April, representatives from entities such as MRED, the California Police Department, the California R-I School District, California Progress Inc., El Puente-Hispanic Ministry, and the Missouri Department of Social Services agreed a lack of child care is a pressing issue for the area.
A previous Democrat article noted, "Moniteau County is an area in need of 50 child care spots or more, otherwise known as a 'child care desert.' MRED first took note of this issue and alerted the CMCA of the problem as well."
The CMCA's goal for this year's program is for all Moniteau families to have access to child care. It's for local entities in the program to join together, make a plan for how this can be done and enact it within Moniteau County.
During last week's meeting, the CMCA brainstormed with MRED President Mike Kelley to see what they needed to do moving forward.
"We combined forces with the CMCA group Wednesday and went over a few things. And we did kind of a little SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis where we talked about our respective organizations around the room, and then we made a list of who we felt we should include in our meetings to affect change," Kelley said. "There really needs to be some change on regulations and rules on this level and there needs to be changes in community involvement with helping child care providers, whatever that may be."
Although Kelley said in previous interviews there is no single answer to fixing the child care issue in Moniteau County, his organization is open to several solutions available to the area.
He said the CMCA is good at gathering data, while MRED's focus group is more idea-oriented. In an interview with the Democrat, Community Organizer Jenn Millard said she plan on working together as a community to figure out the child care issue in Moniteau County moving forward, whether it's providing more slots in child care facilities, more education or trying to get more staff for facilities.
CMCA's "Show Me Strong Communities" program plans three more meetings for the year. Attendees will discuss further research and development for the expansion of child care in Moniteau County. Millard said she plans to invite parents and day care providers for insight during her organization's next meeting.
CMCA's next "Show Me Strong Communities" meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 12 at California City Hall.