The Face of Child Care has Changed
Communities form taskforces to address their child care needs
“What I’ve been telling legislators is: We look at child care just like water and sewer. Nobody else will do it because you don’t make money, so that’s when the city has to go pick it up,” says Shannon Mortenson, the city administrator for Warren.
Warren became the first city in the state to receive legislative approval to seek a half-cent sales tax that would help fund the construction of a new child care center, relocating and expanding the existing Little Sprouts Learning Center into a 10,000-square-foot center with the ability of caring for 110 children, more than double than the number that can be cared for in the current facility.
The process began in 2016 when the city was asked to take a lead in addressing child care shortages. The child care center was experiencing financial hardships and five of the community’s 11 in-home child care providers were retiring. An arduous process followed as the community, led by a core group of dedicated committee members, investigated the needs and figured out how to address them.
Shannon said a key to Warren’s success throughout that process was keeping the community well informed, through public meetings, frequent articles in the newspaper, and ongoing communications.
“I think it was very helpful for the community to understand that the face of daycare has changed,” Shannon said. “It is expensive and it is hard to find. Now, there is the educational component – it’s not just dropping your kids off at the neighbor’s house. There are a ton of regulations and people don’t realize the expense that goes into meeting those. They think that child care providers are making so much money based on what they are paying them, but they don’t see what comes out of that check to keep the business running.”
While further along in the process toward opening a new child care center, Warren’s situation is not unique among the communities through Northwest Minnesota. Similar efforts have been started in roughly a dozen areas in the region.
“People are really starting to see that (child care) is a backbone piece to the economic development of all of these communities,” said Missy Okeson, a Northwest Minnesota Foundation program officer dedicated to addressing child care shortages throughout the region.
One of the keys for Warren was being accepted into the Rural Child Care Innovation Project (RCCIP) through First Children’s Finance (FCF). FCF’s study, completed in October 2019, revealed there was a need for 187 child care slots within a 10-mile radius of Warren.
Communities apply for the RCCIP, seeking guidance in how best to address their child care challenges and shortages. NMF has been partnering with FCF since 2017 to ensure the program is available to communities throughout Northwest Minnesota. To date, five areas in the region have gone through the RCCIP process: Warren, Bemidji, Roseau County, and the Northwest Area, an effort that included Marshall, Norman, Pennington, and Polk counties.
The RCCIP uses a community engagement process designed to develop right-sized solutions to increase the supply of high-quality affordable child care in rural communities.
“Essentially, what we’re looking for on our side is a solid core team,” said Lydia Pietruszewski, FCF’s business development specialist for Northwest Minnesota, “people who have a fair understanding of child care needs, or at least the child care realm, as well as economic development, the business side of things. Diverse perspectives.”
The process also is inclusive of existing family child care providers and staff at local child care centers, if there are any in the community. FCF performs a supply and demand gap analysis for the zip codes in that community and provides on-boarding to that core team, between 12 to 25 people.
“We look at, what is the gap between child care needs and child care supply,” Lydia explained. “We do all that background data collection, and then we come and present that to the core team in an on-boarding session which is about a six-hour day. We cover that supply-demand gap, and we cover the complications of child care in general, why it costs so much.”
The RCCIP process also includes child care appreciation events and public town halls, at which the larger community is invited to come and learn more about child care and current needs. FCF guides the community through certain topics and discussion points, such as what businesses can do to support child care and what the community can do to support existing providers so they stay open.
“But the solutions and the goals that are proposed by the core team are the right-sized solutions for their specific community; that comes directly from the community,” Lydia said.
The entire process takes between 18 and 24 months.
“That program (the RCCIP), for any other communities or areas that are struggling with child care, I highly recommend it,” said Shannon, with the City of Warren, “simply because of the educational component, when you have to visit with your community on why child care is a challenge. Because, for a lot of people, if it’s not in their life, they don’t see it. Times have changed drastically.”
