LOYAL. LOCAL. COMPLETE.
In Edgar County, the Paris Economic Development Corporation (PEDCO) is making the issue of childcare its focus. Childcare is an ongoing concern that touches multiple aspects of a community. Not only does childcare affect families, it is also a critical workforce and economic issue.
To understand the needs of the county and its residents, PEDCO enlisted the help of Jeff Andrews, Founder and President of Business of Childcare. Andrews is a seasoned business strategist who approaches the childcare industry with a “whole community approach.”
On behalf of PEDCO, Andrews hosted three separate conversations with residents on Wednesday, Aug. 28 at Prospect Bank. In each session, Andrews shared the meeting’s purpose was to identify barriers in childcare and their ideal solutions.
“We are not here to solve it all, but we do want to help highlight the struggle and help,” he said. “We help communities try to figure out a plan, and figure out the funding.”
As a plan architect, Andrews leads each group through open sessions where they share the concerns they see and the ways they believe those issues could be solved.
In the first session, Andrews met with employers and asked them to share the most prominent concerns they had with childcare. Among the issues they scrutinized, leaders from Horizon Health, Crestwood School and Farm Credit Illinois discussed concerns over cost, hours of operation, credibility concerns for childcare providers and heavy turnover rates of both caregivers and employees.
Several participants explained they felt as though Edgar County is missing out on talent in the workforce because of limited spots available in local daycares. Others recounted examples of working mothers unable to return from maternity leave since they have to stay home with their new child for longer periods.
Horizon Health’s PR, Marketing and Grants Manager Erin Frank explained expanding the bandwidth of current daycare providers and potentially attracting new ones should be a priority, even if all the challenges face by local daycares cannot be addressed immediately.
“If you open another daycare that had the exact same problems... We’d still be ahead. We need that,” said Frank. “You’d still have people being like, ‘not ideal, but that’s great. I’m just glad there’s access.’”
In a second session with education leaders, Andrews discussed the challenges educators face with representatives from Paris 95’s preschool programs, the Illinois Birth to Five program and a PERK program coordinator. A prominent issue the panel discussed was the lack of reliable before and after-school care.
“This area is a manufacturing community, the majority of parents are working at factories and they are working different shifts. They can’t hold those jobs without someone to care for their kids, and they can’t find someone to care for their kids at those times,” Ellyn Andrews of Illinois Birth to Five explained.
Other issues the second session highlighted included an abundance of under-trained care providers, a lack of family engagement, difficulty communicating opportunities for furthering education and developing better skills with caregivers and parents.
“Unfortunately, patience comes from a sense of negativity,” Erica Hollis, instructional leader for preschool programs in District 95 said. “If you’re having to have patience in a scenario, it’s because you are experiencing a negative interaction with a situation or a person. I know a lot of teachers, childcare providers and parents are all having to be patient.”
The final session of the evening included current childcare providers in Edgar County. A variety of in-home childcare and private daycare providers attended the meeting.
Conversations among the session’s attendees focus on issues of cost and whether or not daycare centers should continue to raise their prices to match the rising costs of inflation. Childcare providers also argued for a better sense of understanding and respect from parents and local schools with several commenting that daycare providers often feel invisible to the community and unappreciated.
“The number one community issue is the overall viewing of childcare. Being a small rural community, you’ve got a lot of families that say ‘babysitting is too expensive.’ This is not babysitting. Or you have some families who say ‘my children will never go to daycare’ because they don’t trust anyone or they don’t see the value,” said a childcare provider. “Really, for us, it’s seeing childcare as a group and that it’s important. We’re not really getting good publicity right now.”
PEDCO will receive a full plan with a list of desired outcomes from Andrews in about two weeks detailing the issues highlighted by residents. An activation plan, or action plan, should follow in about six weeks.
In all three sessions, attendees shared their ideal fixes to local childcare concerns. The solutions included large employers providing on-site childcare for overnight and third shift employees, additional licensed daycare facilities, reducing the cost of care and finding ways to create community support for providers and educators.
According to Andrews, understanding the current childcare landscape and identifying economic benefits and opportunities are the keys to enhancing childcare now and in the future.
“Once we have clarity and agreement on the desired outcomes, we create an activation plan for the community that leverages existing resources and supports in the community while identifying potential solutions for gaps in coverage,” he said. “The effort begins with recognizing and resourcing existing child care providers. It is important to recognize the critical role these providers are already playing in the community, and how necessary their participation is to the success of any effort to build new capacity.”
Andrews says his final plan will optimize existing childcare and community assets that could be repurposed to create new capacity and, if needed, build additional childcare spaces with directions for establishing and maintaining the financial burdens those expansions could bring.