Closing the gap for child care in FF, surrounding area

April 06--A gap analysis on child care conducted this year shows there are potentially 517 children in need of care. The analysis covers a 20 mile radius around Fergus Falls. Marsha Erickson, Resource Development Director with United Way of Otter Tail and Wadena counties, and various other community leaders are partnering together to work toward minimizing this gap.

In this child care partnership, Erickson works as the Otter Tail County Early Childhood Initiative Coordinator. Jessica Beyer conducted the gap analysis and she is a business development specialist with First Children's Finance, a nonprofit that focuses on the business aspect of child care. She works on the community level to help child care providers, businesses etc. find child care solutions and partnerships that works for them.

"We work across the entire state," Beyer said. "We can do gap analysis, a lot of technical assistance and provide the financials of child care programs or potential programs for communities thinking about child care."

Erickson said she, Beyer and other partners have been working on finding a child care solution in Fergus Falls for about two years, but it takes a community to work on something so complex. They are not aiming to create 520 new spots in child care, but to improve accessibility for the families in that number who may be looking for it.

Michelle Wilkowski, the interim Head Start director for Mahube-Otwa Community Action Partnership, is also partnering in this project and she said access to quality care for all children and families at all income levels is a priority. That means providers need to be able to accept child care assistance and are rated in the Parent Aware System so families can use scholarship dollars to afford child care.

With Mahube-Otwa, Wilkowski said they received a grant to do an Early Head Start Child Care partnership to serve children from birth to age 3 for center based opportunities or family based.

"One piece of our Early Head Start program is that our target is low income families get priority, because we want them to get access to quality care that everybody else gets to," Wilkowski said.

Other partners striving for better access to child care in the surrounding community include Amy Baldwin, Fergus Falls Economic Development Director and executive director of economic improvement commision; Dennis Lipp director of the Fergus Falls Area Family YMCA and interested community participant looking to see, "if the Y can be a piece of the puzzle,"; Child Care Aware, local employers, Otter Tail County, West Central Initiative, the city, Lakes Country Service Coop, Fergus Falls School District, Chamber of Commerce and child care providers.

Why it care matters

"90 percent of a child's brain development occurs in the first three years of their life," Erickson said. "Yet the care that a child receives during those first few years is piecemealed together in the sense that parents are having to make tough decisions around child care."

According to Erickson, our national model does not effectively support early childhood care. Nationally, the system requires the government to step in for children at age 5, and provide paid for care from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Erickson acknowledges that fact that this involvement is important, but it doesn't come soon enough. Parents have to find quality care and be able to afford it.

"We have looked at--in the last couple of years-- putting together a model or guideline to help increase the access to care," Erickson said. "There is a lot of advocacy for this. The big thing is supporting our current child care workforce by bringing trainings in and helping with the accessibility by bringing in employers, because they are feeling the pinch of this now in the workforce."

Accessibility affects employers

Baldwin has been in her position with the city for three years and when she moved to Fergus Falls, she personally encountered one of the main issues caused by insufficient child care --Employment. So her role in this is to bring employers to the table, because child care does affect businesses' recruitment and retention.

"There are layers of complexity to this issue that from outside, might seem like a supply and demand issue [for day care], but it is so much more complicated," Baldwin said.

Not only does the Fergus Falls workforce have more open positions than people applying, but lack of child care is also serving as a deterrent to working in the surrounding community.

"We are working on recruiting people but once you recruit them, then they don't have child care," Baldwin said. "Quality child care is a piece that matters to employers, because if a parent at work really does not have a great sense of comfort of where their child is being cared for, that impacts their productivity and may cause more absenteeism and employers understand that impacts the bottom line."

Just last March, 50 community members from Otter Tail County came together because child care accessibility and workforce recruitment is a regional situation. Baldwin said about half of the Fergus Falls workforce comes from outside the city limits.

"So it matters what is happening in Underwood, Battle Lake and the community surrounding us," Baldwin said.

On the flipside of things, Baldwin said recruiting people to work in the child care field is a challenge as well.

"It is a low wage career option for folks," Baldwin said.

Beyer said in order for child care opportunities to flourish, those in that field need to be paid better.

"The women who operate these programs need to be making enough where they want to stay in it and be successful and build the program's quality," Beyer said. "That takes resources, more time and education and we want them to want to do that."

It's also not as simple as opening a childcare center and filling it so there is no longer a shortage of care. Baldwin said there are operation costs and regulations to follow. Plus, Wilkowski said it's less about providing a care center and more about providing quality care.

"The key is quality care with professionals in the field," Wilkowski said. "We want a quality environment, quality staff and successful businesses and that is no small feat."

That's why it's important to invest in various solutions that best fit a community, according to Baldwin.

Erickson said she and other partners have been working to gather and engage employers by showing them the role they have in child care and connecting them with models that could fit their business needs. Supporting their employees' needs for child care does not mean businesses have to become child care centers.

Beyer said when working through a community engagement process and bringing people, businesses to the table, "it takes a while to figure out who will help move the dial forward." That takes conversations over how many kids are in need, how have other communities dealt with this issue and thinking outside of the box.

"Businesses are partnering in different ways," Beyer said. "Some businesses say, 'Yep, we need to adjust this for our employees,' and they end up going into the business of child care whether it's family or centre based programs. Other businesses look at other models that they could help to support programs, but you really need to make those partnerships."

For instance, Beyer said the community of New York Mills is moving forward with a partnership with Mahube-Otwa and Battle Lake is moving forward on a center based model.

This child care coalition of sorts has also reached out beyond county lines. Erickson said for solutions that cannot be solved within the community, they are communicating with state and federal representatives. In addition to her responsibilities with the city, Baldwin is also on the board of directors for Greater Mind Partnership and she helps lead statewide talks about issues and resources needed in the community and in greater Minnesota.

"We want a voice and regionally, we have had those dialogues. ... we talked to our representatives and senators and staff at the federal level," Baldwin said. "Sen. Smith has identified the issues we are talking about and we are feeding into her staff and giving them information on what we are doing here and what the challenges are in greater Minnesota from tying it around the workforce and the support and development of our youngest people."

Proposed partnership

In addition to engaging local businesses, Erickson said it is important to more in existing child care providers. The Fergus Falls School District seems to agree as they are working on partnering with Children's Corner. Baldwin said it was announced that Children's Corner would be consolidating their current three locations and relocate to the Heritage Building.

"The school district has some planned investments for early childhood," Baldwin said. "Their preschool program and ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education) programming that are currently in the building but move into a new space and Children's Corner will move in the space where the library is today."

The child care center would then share operations with the school district including a play space, the kitchen, serving area and space for food preparation. Baldwin said this partnership would provide operational efficiencies and allow Children's Corner to increase their capacity while being a singular facility. Children's Corner is also partnering with First Children's Finance to understand their operations today and what efficiencies could be gained moving into a single space. They have also received some Blandin Foundation funding to help with that analysis and they will be looking at the space layout with a local architect.

"This is all in the proposal stage," Baldwin said. "It has been approved by the boards and the school board as well."

While the partnership between the school district and Children's Corner has been approved, the funding and how the shared spaces are going to work are still in process of being figured out and approved.

Shift the mindset

The last piece to this child care puzzle, but perhaps the most important is shifting the mindset around child care and thus making it a more attractive field to invest in.

"We need to make the shift in respecting the child care workforce and move away from the mentality that it's just a stay at home mom/parent who wants to get some extra income," Erickson said. "These are primarily women who are working really hard taking care of our most precious assets and they are doing an awesome job. It's just how we can respect them for that, because they are an integral part of our economy."

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