Group seeks to solve childcare crisis

By ROBERT PIERCE

• Leader & Times

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) is seemingly an issue all across America, and recently, focus groups looked at specifically workforce issues in Seward County and Stevens County.

The focus groups were led by Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, along with Kansas State University’s Office of Educational Innovation and Evaluation and K-State Research and Extension.

Liberal Area Coalition for Families Director Sarah Mersdorf-Foreman, who coordinated the events in March, said K-State researchers were looking for participants to take in the group session to help them understand issues related to recruitment and retention and the career pathway for early childhood care and education professionals in communities.

“This was in partnership with K-State,” she said. “What they wanted to know is child care needs within Seward County, what the perception was as far as availability for workforce and to get a temperature on the community as far as how they feel about child care.”

Current ECCE professionals individuals who have left the profession within the past five years and community members concerned about the recruitment and retention of the ECCE workforce were invited to participate.

Mersdorf-Foreman said she was unsure of how to gauge the local child care situation, but she did say there seems to be a constant need for infant care.

“That seems to be the most in demand – quality accessible affordable infant care – and very difficult to find,” she said.

Mersdorf-Foreman, though, did say there are many incentives for daycare providers to get started.

“K-State used us as a go between to reach out into the community and to host the event,” she said. “The participation was really great. I think we had about 35 in Seward County, and we had 45 in Stevens County.”

Mersdorf-Foreman said other local child care issues include a lack of quality affordable child care and, primarily licensed child care providers.

With the format of the recent events being more in the sense of a focus group, Mersdorf-Foreman said in that setting, solutions were not determined at the time of the meetings, but rather information is being taken back to research teams who will later bring back what they heard to local leaders.

“Then we will address what the next steps are,” she said.

In Seward County and Stevens County, Mersdorf-Foreman said LACF basically served as a middle man in the process, connecting the community to resources specifically around child care. She said, however, Stevens County’s daycare industry appears to be in a dire situation at this time.

“They have one, maybe two licensed child care homes,” she said. “We’re working more steadily over there to assist them in getting more resources over there to get a center opened up.”

So what are some of the factors leading to a lack of child care in the area? Mersdorf-Foreman said two big issues are pay and benefits.

“If they can find a higher paying job, workers will often leave child care,” she said. “If they’re not offered benefits at a center, it becomes an issue. Additionally, I think the morale among child care providers can be low. They’re often not valued as much as they need to be. Changing the focus on the necessity of child care providers and the critical role they play in those first years for kids is critical.”

Mersdorf-Foreman said ever increasing licensing costs and regulation likewise lead to less people interested in operating a daycare.

“That’s pretty burdensome specifically if you’re starting up a home day care,” she said. “There’s a lot of money that has to go into getting everything up with the licensing requirements.”