Finding solutions to local child care problems

May 10—There are 10,000 children in Daviess County below the age of 6, and for those children there are only 28 licensed child care centers within the four-county region of Daviess, Henderson, Ohio, and Hancock counties available to offer services for families.

Local early child care and preschool leaders have been working with the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, as part of its Greater Owensboro Partnership for Early Development (GOPED) to further develop and expand opportunities for families with young children.

They also are working to ensure that the licensed child care centers that are available have quality and informed staff who are all up-to-date on best practices within the industry.

GOPED consists of members of the Public Life Foundation of Owensboro, the Prichard Committee, and more than 30 community leaders, including Sherry Baber, and Chris Westerfield, preschool coordinators for the Owensboro Public Schools and the Daviess County Public Schools districts, respectively.

Both Baber and Westerfield say that child care and early education are critical components of a healthy society. They both agree there is a significant need in both areas.

The ages between 1 and 6 are important. That is when a child's brain is developing faster than any other time in their life. Providing a healthy and safe learning environment that is top quality is imperative, Baber said.

That is why groups like GOPED are working hard to identify the local child care and early education needs.

The four-county group of Daviess, Hancock, Henderson, and Ohio child care and preschool leaders are also working together for grants to help current centers pay for proper staff training.

"We need the community and the citizens of our community to understand the critical importance of this," Baber said. "We don't have a choice but to invest."

Westerfield said there are multiple problems that contribute to the local "child care desert."

Child care deserts, according to the Center for American Progress, are areas with at least 50 children under the age of 5 with no, or few, child care providers options, which amount to there being more than three-times as many children as there are licensed child care slots.

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services labeled Daviess County as a category three county: having three to six children per available child care slot. There are 59 counties within the commonwealth that fall within this range.

Westerfield said within Owensboro, and other city centers in the region, there appear to be several options for child care.

"The deserts start to come up out in the far west and east ends of the county," he said. "There are no day care centers that feed out into those particular areas. The options are very limited outside of town."

He said during the pandemic, the area lost at least two day care centers for several reasons, but mainly because they couldn't keep enough staff to maintain their services.

Staffing is a large issue when it comes to such centers. Centers often aren't able to pay a lot of money for staff, and they aren't able to offer benefits.

Westerfield also said the community may not be as cognizant about the lack of quality care centers in the area, which is why awareness is so important.

It's also vital to help support the currently operating centers, and ensuring they are receiving adequate professional development and training for their staff.

That is part of the work Westerfield and Baber do with surrounding counties.

As this discussion has continued over the last decade, there have been several "solutions" to this problem, though such measures take time.

For example, Baber said, when Toyota Motor Manufacturing expanded its operations for its employees in the area, it began offering child care in-house. Initiatives like that should be supported, she said.

"If parents have access to child care at their place of work, that would eliminate many barriers for them," she said.

The Early Childhood Education Advocates group has suggested private investments in these desert communities.

So does the Center of American Progress, which cited in its 2016 report on Child Care Deserts that "this lack of supply and proximity cannot be corrected without an infrastructure investment."

Furthermore, the report said that, just as policymakers allocated funds for roads, bridges and public buildings, "they must allocate public resources toward improving the infrastructure necessary for high-quality child care and early childhood education."

There is also inequality when it comes to children who attend care centers. It costs money to run a quality child care center, and many families can't afford that, Baber said.

According to the Early Childhood Profile for Kentucky, only 613 children in Daviess County receive support through the state's Child Care Assistance Program for Families (CCAP). That program helps families pay for child care, but families must first qualify.

"So that's not a lot," Baber said, and she also cited a 2020 market rate survey that indicated full-time prices for child care were $7,800 a year for an infant, $7,670 a year for toddlers, and $7,280 a year for preschool-age children.

"So not only do we need more options for quality care centers, we also need to make it more affordable for families," she said.

Baber and Westerfield, and others within the GOPED group, released a strategic plan earlier this year with six recommendations for helping to expand access to early childhood education programs. Included was enrolling all eligible families for CCAP, and expanding eligibility for the program, as well as implementing employee-based care partnerships.

The work of GOPED is nowhere near complete, but good progress has been made, both Baber and Westerfield agree.

GOPED invites others to join its efforts as it moves on to next steps in creating a community in which all children can have equal access to the same opportunities for quality early learning.

To learn more about the partnership, visit https://prichardcommittee.org/goped/.

Bobbie Hayse, bhayse@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7315

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