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In May, STEP Inc. in partnership with the Early Learning Resource Center, compiled information calling it a "Day Without Child Care," to send the warning of an impending crisis. Now, a little over three months later, many families in the county are dealing with that as a reality, with the closing of two child care centers in as many months and they're having to make tough decisions about what to do moving forward.
When speaking with Rachelle Abbott, STEP's chief operations and planning officer, she stressed that this is a crisis that has been in the making for many years.
"We were trying to raise an alarm with some of these things, because we could see it coming," Abbott said.
"Lycoming County is in a child care crisis. The region is in a child care crisis. It's not just Lycoming. It's Clinton County, Tioga County. A lot of the rural counties just don't have the slots," Abbott added.
The perfect storm that came together creating this crisis had several fronts.
The lack of qualified staff being one, others include low wages, a feeder system for training staff, a perception by people that child care workers are "just babysitters" and even the fact that this is a rural area.
In January, STEP contacted every child care center in Lycoming, Clinton and Tioga counties to determine how many non-enrollable slots they had due to lack of staff. Lycoming had 343, Clinton, 22, and Tioga, 112. Non-enrollable means that although a child care center was licensed to take a certain number of children, they could not accommodate that amount due to having no staff to fulfill the staff-to-child ratio.
With the recent child care center closings, the number in Lycoming County has jumped to 683
slots with the addition of 340 between FUN Academy and the child care center at the Williamsport YMCA. Those facilities were not running at capacity when they were closed, so that number does not reflect the actual number of children who had been at a facility. The closings only exacerbated an already critical situation.
That puts parents and caregivers in a situation where they receive notification that their child care facility is closing or being shut down and there are no openings for their child or children -- anywhere. They are informed they can be put on a waiting list, but according to Abbott, some waiting lists are a year long. Some facilities stopped adding kids to waitlists because they are too long.
Then, there is a shortage of qualified staff. This too has many causes -- economic, geographic and for some, a lack of training.
To work in an early childhood education facility, new employees must obtain four clearances and 10 hours of health and safety training before entering the classroom. They are required to have various levels of education based on position and type of setting where they will be employed. Once a year, early childhood programs and professionals are required to commit to 12 hours of training in order to be in compliance with the Department of Human Services certification.
The programs must maintain yearly certification in order to remain in operation giving early childhood education high overhead costs.
All of these affect the bottom line. Because of this, child care workers' pay is less than other professions that require less training. Most do not make a living wage, which is the reason that Penn College discontinued its early childhood education program. Those wanting to go into the field have to either take classes online or at a four-year college, which many times takes them out of the child care center setting and into public education.
Workers in the child care industry -- all occupations -- earn 45% of the average weekly wage of private sector employees, according to information from Start Strong PA.
"There is a tremendous amount of requirements that they have to do. There are also issues as it relates to the cost of compensation, child care providers and child care, the care of children -- education -- is not valued monetarily," Abbott said.
The cost of employee compensation plus the overhead of running a child care facility cause rates to go up. The areas that STEP serves are rural. Oftentimes centers base their rates on what the community can afford, which results in staff being underpaid.
"Because the community can only afford so much -- our families in our area. We don’t have a very high income capital within our communities...the amount that the families would have to pay for child care to make their child care workers have a living wage is huge and providers can’t afford to do that because they would have nobody come into their locations," she said.
"It’s a very complicated situation for providers and for parents because they are trying to look for the most cost effective way to get care so that they can work. Most people aren’t just needing child care because they’d have nothing else to do. People need the early care and education and child care for child development to ensure that they are meeting the health and safety of their kiddos and so that they can be in the community in the workforce to to work. Those are the key pieces of the puzzle," Abbott said.
There is a tipping point where if the facilities charge too much, the people who are working most of the jobs in this area, can't afford childcare.
"This is economic development, child care is economic development, early education is workforce development...that tied to the fact that our families are working, and that is why they need the care. I don’t know how many people probably had to call off when these closures happened," she stated.
The other side is that the person who's watching your child and giving them an education needs to be valued, which should translate into higher wages.
"We can't have folks making below a living wage. They're making below a living wage," she said.
Perception of what child care workers do also plays into what people think they should be paid.
"People think they're babysitters," Abbott said, adding that babysitters aren't required to get the training that child care workers do.
The lack of child care slots creates an opportunity for people who are less trained to offer desperate parents a solution.
"That is a very dangerous situation," Abbott said, citing the lack of clearances which could alert parents to someone's history of abuse.
"You can’t just put an iPad in front of a kiddo these days because who knows what’s on there. That to me has been extremely scary because our children, our community, are really left without that support when we’re losing all these child care centers...it’s a terrible thing we have always had the lack of slots and this is perpetuating a much bigger conversation," Abbott said.
Moving forward to try to find solutions, Abbott said, "In our community, we really have to look and understand what’s happening. I think there’s also a broader piece like, what can we look at, from the legislative and all those pieces. The access to education for this profession is critical. Unfortunately, we don’t have that access anymore."
"When we can’t get certified folks who are educated in our facilities, we’re seeing the trickle down," she said.
Because of that, what happened over the last few months was inevitable, she said.
STEP and the Early Learning Resource Center is and has been working to alleviate the crisis.
"We have been strategizing and working on how we can help. One of the things that we’ve talked about is what the innovation looks like, a kind of joint onboarding, joint training for providers, making sure everyone has their clearances, trying to take things off of providers' plates, essentially, so that they can focus on the care in the classrooms. If we can help and (provide) those pieces that could be a huge benefit," she said.
"The whole idea of trying to find staff and make child care a place where they can fit. The idea of a substitute pool, a place where if you’re a retired teacher, you can totally go into an early care classroom as a sub. We need funding to make that happen." she said.
Large employers in the community offering on-site child care as a benefit is another possible solution which points to the idea of workforce development. There have also been large child care operations that offer franchises that have been popping up across the country, Abbott said. So far there are none in Lycoming County, although one has opened in Clinton County.
Finding solutions benefits not only parents and children, but also the community overall.
"We want people to stay here. We want people to be supported. Lycoming County’s population isn’t rising. If you’re not family-friendly, who’s going to come here and have kids and stay? We need to be focusing on what that looks like, as a family-friendly community," Abbott said.
"One of the pieces of a family-friendly community is having ample slots, and ample child care and early care, education opportunities. And so, really thinking about that early care and education piece and how it is a benefit for our residents for the community, and how can the community support something so that there’s high quality staff in all the classrooms so what has happened in the last few months won't ever happen again," she said.
"The long term solution is going to take a long time. Who knows when or if any of these slots will become available again, and what does that look like? I think it’s important that as a community we strategize the big picture," she said, because, "it's devastating for our families, all the families."