Jefferson and Lewis were the only counties in our region to increase child care options during the pandemic. Here's how they did it.
Apr 06, 2022 —
The North Country has a big child care problem. About 85% of our region is considered a child care desert, meaning there are more children than slots in care. Increasingly, it's been recognized as a workforce issue, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the course of the pandemic, our region lost a lot of child care slots. But not in Jefferson and Lewis counties. This is the story of why.
A local solution to the child care problem
In early 2021, a group of women got together to talk about child care in Jefferson and Lewis counties. They knew they were losing providers, and that child care was a barrier to people being able to return to work.
Liz Lonergan is the regional director of the Small Business Development Center in Watertown, based at Jefferson Community College, and she was at that meeting, alongside women in charge of economic development, community action, and county planning. She says that group understood the struggle of child care all too well.
"Every one of us have or have had children. We've all dealt with childcare. We all are veterans of that. And we felt like, alright, we really need to do this."
Megan Stadler oversees workforce development at Jefferson Community College. She was there too, and remembers sitting around a table, asking, "Okay, what can we do here?" She says that relatively quickly they, "...identified that expanding home-based childcare would be a way to quickly expand slots available to the community."
Home-based providers run daycares for 8 to 16 children out of their homes. It’s much cheaper to start and maintain than a center, and works well in rural areas like the North Country, where the population is so spread out.
How to support home-based providers?
Here was the problem: these days, being a home-based provider (or working in child care at all) isn't exactly attractive: this is not a profession that makes much money. It requires long days, and it can be lonely. Those that get into it usually do it because they love kids, and aren't looking for a payday. But it also requires running a small business out of your home, accounting, budgets, and customer service relations included.
The group realized if they wanted more providers up and running, they needed to make the process as easy as possible. They could help with filling out applications, identifying changes in homes to bring them up to code, and setting up trainings and certifications, like first aid.
But they also wanted to set up providers for long-term business success, says Stadler. "The individuals that want to open a home childcare facility, they love children, but they may not have all of those business skills."
They imagined a program that also incorporated business training, courses at JCC, and a social network for new providers. They wanted to build a robust, supportive training program, to help shepherd interested people through the whole process.
But they needed the money to do it.
Getting financial buy-in
Luckily, Brittany Davis from Lewis County’s Economic Development was already committed to the idea; she was the one that called that first meeting with Casandra Buell, Lewis County's Director of Planning.
Her counterpart in Jefferson County, David Zembiec, jumped on board early in the process. He says he and his office had been aware of how crucial child care was to a healthy workforce, but had been unsure what part they could play. He says hearing about the training program was a lightbulb moment.
"When Lewis County started working [on this], [we thought] jeez, yeah, why wouldn't we play a role in this? Because [child care] is economic development. If people can get childcare, they can take the time and they can afford to go to work."
Zembiec and Davis went to their respective economic development agenices for Jefferson and Lewis counties, and asked for seed money for the local training program. Their argument was that they needed to do something proactive about child care, on the local level.
"You know, we hear this talk at the state and federal levels about addressing child care. Let's see what we can do in the meantime, to start improving capacity," says Zembiec.
Each agency contributed $24,000 dollars, for a first year pot of $48,000.
Liz Lonergan says they were truly, "building the airplane while we flew it." They got started with an advertising campaign, both online and via mailers, designed and distributed by Jefferson Community College. That yielded them a couple dozen potential providers, and they got the program started, which was jokingly nicknamed 'bootcamp' by participants.
Making providers successful for in the long-term
'Bootcamp' had a real name: the Home-Based Child Care Training Program, and it had three goals: 1) rapidly expand child care, 2) make it quality child care, 3) make them successful businesses.
They also wanted to make it as simple and easy for the potential providers as possible; Lonergan referred to creating an 'out-of-the-box' style program.
It started with paperwork. The application to become a registered and licensed child care provider in New York State is extensive. Siera Smith, a 31 year old mother of four who lives in Watertown, says the paperwork was her achilles heel. "That...that was work. And it was a booklet two inches thick!"
The program helped potential providers fill out their applications, get the necessary inspections, and identify what they would need to change in their homes to get up to code. It also set up and paid for required first aid and safety trainings.
"They basically pulled us through the whole process," says Smith. "If they weren't as involved, I probably would have given up! They were a big part of why I'm here."
Smith is opening her home daycare in April. She converted a large and bright sunroom at the back of her home in downtown Watertown into a home daycare space. It’s a colroful room filled with toys and books and soft mats, a mini-kitchen in one corner. It has its own entrance, with a little mudroom for the kids.
Smith says child care is a natural fit for her. She was a stay-at-home-mom to her four children, and has worked in a child care center before. She loves being around kids, "I get so overwhelmed with joy when children when they accomplish small things, and they're so excited about it. Children are like, all I really know. You know, that's when my heart is."
She’d thought about trying to open her own home daycare before, but had been daunted by the licensing process. The training program got her through that.
It went a lot further, too. Smith got business training specifically for a home daycare, designed by Liz Lonergan and her colleagues at the Small Business Development Center. She took a course at Jefferson Community College, free of charge, on early childhood development. "I've learned so much. School has taught me a lot more of like the more on the learning side, like how the children learn. It gives them more confidence. Like I know that I know I can do this."
She had a cohort of other people going through the same process, and a lot of people rooting for her success, emailing her, asking what she needed help with.
She says the training program was central to getting her open, and Smith also says this is just her beginning. She sees herself working in child care for a long time, "maybe in the future I'll move to a group family [daycare] where I have more children, maybe I'll open a center. But this is my start."
56 new slots makes all the difference
From that first cohort in 2021, Smith is one of seven new home-based providers in the community. That’s 56 new child care slots. That might not sound like much, but consider this: across the North Country, every county lost child care capacity in the last two years, some by as much as 25%. Except for Jefferson and Lewis counties.
Cathy Brodeur is from the Jefferson-Lewis Child Care Project. "You know, we've added programs. That's a big difference. We [only] have 50 family childcare homes." So seven new providers really does change the landscape.
Brodeur has been a child care advocate for a long time. She says this worked because it wasn’t just her saying child care was important. "And when the message comes from the economic development people and it comes from Jefferson Community College, people pay attention in a different way."
The future of the program and child care in Jefferson and Lewis counties
The second year of the program started in early March. This year's cohort has eighteen particpants hoping to open twelve home-based daycares, which should yield about 100 new spots, and increase local capacity by about another 20%.
Jefferson and Lewis counties have committed to funding the current program, and future programs. They're providing even more money, about $400,000 combined, drawn from federal COVID-19 relief stimulus funding. That money will go towards supporting not only the program, but other local child care investments: bonuses for child care workers, paying to hire new staff in child care centers, and grants for materials for home-based providers.
Brodeur says it puts them in a place she never expected to be two years into the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Because of this program, we're coming out of this horrible time with just so much momentum going forward."
They’ve got new providers online, and more coming. And all because local leaders got together to brainstorm, and two legislatures decided to fund their idea and invest in child care.
