Finding affordable and available childcare is an increasingly difficult issue for parents in the workforce.
The Moniteau Regional Economic Development (MRED) held its Childcare and the Workforce meeting on Jan. 20 at the Co-Mo Connect Operation Center in Tipton to discuss the lack of childcare services with representatives of businesses and employers across the county. Carolyn Chrisman, owner of Chrisman Consulting, and Krissie Edwards, the owner of Little Cardinals Learning Center in Tipton, spoke to the guests on the issue.
Edwards discussed her experience as a child care provider and a business owner. She went over the cost of her tuition, the payment of her employees, her ability to operate her business and how state regulations have affected her childcare business as well as how they've kept others from opening.
"When you want to start a new facility, there's so many things that you have to do with so much space," Edwards said. "I'm grandfathered in because I've had my day care for 10 years, so I have to have 35 square foot per child. If you open a new facility that's going to be 45 square foot. So if you open any type of facility of any sort, it's going to be a good size if you want to bring kids."
She explained if she were to relicense to her current facility to change hours benefitting parents or expand she would have to remove children from her care.
"I will actually start having to kick kids out because whenever you revision, (the state) makes you go to the new rules. So instead of 35 square foot a kid that I'm at now, I would lose kids because they'd make me go to 45," Edwards said. "That's why I can't extend my hours at the building."
Edwards mentioned there are a lot of restrictions regarding sanitation and fire concerns. She recounted when she first opened, the state required her to have an updated fire and sprinkler system for her business. Although she understood why the state required this, the system cost almost $40,000 to install. Edwards explained much of these regulations are what halt people from starting their own daycares.
"I mentor people. I try to help them open up and when they find out all the regulations they're like, 'done, don't want to do it.'" Edwards said. "I think if I wouldn't have done this years ago, I probably would have closed. But I love what I do. I know how important things are for the community and for kids, so I don't close. But it's hard. It's hard to stay. I feel like some days I just paid the mortgage because the state really tries to really control what you do."
Edwards told guests she wanted to be completely transparent with where she is currently with Little Cardinals.
"If you are a preschool child, you're $177 a week (at Little Cardinals), so that comes down to $35.40 a day or $3.54 an hour. And that's on an average of 10 hours a day," She continued. "If you are an infant in my center, you're $197 a week. That's $39.40 a day and that's $3.94 an hour. I am significantly cheaper than most centers as far as what we offer. Because they say you should be anywhere between six and $8 an hour for daycare. And I'm like three or four. We try to create a full curriculum with different types of care for the infants. We work with the Tipton school district with all kinds of special services trying to help the kiddos and have for years. We try to get the special services they need before they go to school. We work with the Special Learning Center, First Steps, and all that. And I know a lot of other day cares want to do that as well."
Although Edwards has retained her employees, she explained she cannot afford to give them benefits.
She said the majority of her pay goes to her salary, insurance, and groceries for Little Cardinals Learning Center. Much of the food childcare regulations require her to feed those in her care she cannot get locally. Edwards said she often has to drive to Kansas City, visiting multiple stores to acquire what she needs for the children.
Regulations paired with a lack of assistance from the state persisted throughout her presentation. She described how most day care facilities almost have to be poverty-stricken before they can get any outside help from government organizations. She said although the state of Missouri has toyed with legislation that would help maintain child care and day care services, similar to how it does with schools, nothing substantial has passed.
Carolyn Chrisman then spoke on how she has tried to tackle this issue in her hometown of Kirksville. She emphasized data she collected through surveys that answered how many businesses are affected by employees who require day care for their children. In her data she found that half of the companies said employees had no need for child care, however, other companies in the survey ranged from 16 to 59 percent. She also found that 90 percent of workers needed first-shift day care, 64 percent of workers were absent from taking care of their children when sick or had no school, 20 percent of businesses lost employees due to the lack of available child care and 23 percent of businesses faced difficulties hiring potential employees due to a lack of care as well.
Chrisman explained to guests the term "child care desert" during her time at the meeting. According to her research, a "child care desert" is an area with families in need of 50 spots for child care services. Businesses in the room reported 216 employees required assistance with child care, four times what is defined.
Although Chrisman said there is no silver bullet to this problem, there are many things that can be done in a community to combat it. She explained 85 percent of businesses offered flexible scheduling, seven percent donated to child care centers in the area, some businesses created matching contributions for dependent care assistance, 15 percent offered their employees flexible spending account options and some businesses have even toyed with the idea of creating their own day care for their children of employees. Another way for an area to help with day care is for multiple entities to build a day care service for the community and its citizens as well.
During a segment titled, "Options and Next Steps," Chrisman presented several ideas for how more child care facilities could become available. She said licensed-exempt or church-based child care would be an option, the same with schools, hospitals and health care entities and in-home licensed centers. However, what the county would need to do next is create a task force that could analyze the need for child care in a more in-depth manner.
MRED president Mike Kelley said the workforce is a big issue in this region. He said prominent businesses such as Cargill, Burgers Smokehouse, and certified public accounting groups struggle finding and keeping employees to varying degrees, and the lack of available and affordable child care is a huge stumbling block for people staying in the workforce.
"If you've got two people in the family working, a husband and a wife, have kids, sometimes they find it cheaper for the wife or the husband not to work and stay home with the kids, than to go to child care," Kelley said. "Now child care is expensive but the flip side to that is the child care providers have to pay their people and they're paying a high cost for food to provide to those during the day."
He said that based on what Edwards charges and what guests wrote on their notes, there is a huge disconnect between providers and parents. Kelley said it was a larger issue than what he originally thought but he sees there are still creative ways MRED can address the situation and help families and businesses.
Kelley explained he would like to create a task force to address the issue of child care in the workforce head-on. Evaluating county businesses and their employees would give the task force a better sense of how to approach the issue before establishing a solution.
"In my opinion, phase two is going to be me setting up a task force and having them study this a little more," Kelley continued. "I have some sample questions from an employee survey we can send out. I would like for the task force to consider developing a community survey that we send out and I would like to hear more from some child care providers. Maybe an in-home provider, a licensed provider from California and see what her struggles are."