Child care exchange seen as workforce solution

A community child care exchange is in the works in Greene County.

Amanda Coleman, vice president of early childhood and family development for Community Partnership of the Ozarks Inc., said the pilot program is set to be introduced in August.

The exchange would allow for the equal sharing of child care costs among families meeting certain income requirements, along with employers and, ideally, the state of Missouri, Coleman said. If state funding is not available, local philanthropic funding would be sought, she said. To participate in the exchange, the child care provider and employer would have to be located in Greene County, Coleman said. Coleman added there will be an income requirement, which has not yet been determined.

“We’re planning on 300% of the poverty level, but that’s subject to change,” she said.

Coleman said the target number of children for the pilot will be dependent upon the number of employers who want to participate and what their employee needs are.

“Our hope is to serve 50 children,” she said.

It’s an ambitious timeline, and Coleman said a lot of things have to be in place in order for the program to start.

“If we have providers, employers and employees ready in August, we would like to be ready around that time frame,” she said.

Coleman called the plan a tri-share model. A bi-share model – one that splits child care costs between families and employers – is also being explored, and that would not include an income requirement.

The tri-share program would allow Greene County employers to offer child care slots to their employees while contributing a third of the cost. The funds would be managed by a community intermediary, Community Partnership of the Ozarks, which would assist employees in choosing from among participating providers.

The exchange is being coordinated by the workforce subcommittee of CPO’s Early Care Collaborative.

Coleman said members are representatives from the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, Ozarks Area Community Action Corp., Head Start, Cox Learning Centers, Ozarks Technical Community College’s Early Childhood Education Center and Peapod Learning Center, a private child care provider. Coleman is also a member.

Coleman said child care is an important issue locally. She sees the proposed exchange as a positive step.

“It’s a workforce issue, and this is one step toward progress,” she said. “It’s one of many solutions that our community needs to think through in supporting families and hopefully making child care more affordable.”

The proposed exchange would be coordinated at the local level, according to child care advocacy organization Kids Win Missouri.

Participating employers would be invited to pursue innovative solutions to child care challenges for their workforce, the organization notes, by partnering with other local businesses to pool resources and share costs of creating dedicated child care slots for employees.

Coleman said the subcommittee working on the pilot program met with members of the Springfield chamber in February, and the concept of the exchange was well received.

“We’ve called ours Child Care Works,” she said. “We’re optimistic to offer this to our community and see how it works in Greene County.

“When we talk about capacity issues, staffing issues, business models, workforce issues – this program touches on all of it.”

She noted similar programs are already in place in Kentucky and Michigan, and one is currently being piloted in Jefferson City, with others in the works statewide. Coleman said the local effort is based in part on lessons learned from the experiences in other states.

“We want to make sure it’s something that would be successful,” she said.

A 2024 article in the publication EdSurge outlines the aims of tri-share programs: improving employee retention while bringing people, especially women, back into the workforce by making child care affordable.

Coleman added that the local effort aims to reimburse child care providers at a higher rate for families in the program, to incentivize their participation and pay at rates that accurately reflect the cost of providing child care.

The exchange may lead to an expansion of existing providers after a few years of operating the program, she said.

“We still have some child care providers in our community that have space but don’t have open classrooms because staffing continues to be an issue,” she said. “If child care providers are able to charge the true cost of care, we can talk about paying higher rates.”

Gov. Mike Kehoe has already made moves to address regulatory challenges with an executive order to overhaul the state’s child care regulations. Additionally, the state budget includes a $10 million allocation for grant funding to support partnerships among employers, community partners and the child care industry to open more slots for Missouri families, according to the website of the Governor’s office.

This allocation is not intended for child care exchanges, but rather to spur innovation within the industry, according to the Governor’s office.

Coleman said funding exists in the Missouri Quality Pre-K Grant program, commonly referred to as MOQPK, and is currently underutilized. Kids Win is advocating for some language changes to allow communities to make use of these funds for exchanges, she said.

“The goal is to utilize a small percentage of this funding and still have it available for its original purpose,” she said.

A need exists
In January, Child Care Aware of Missouri reported that the average annual cost of full-time care is $8,100, representing 14% of an average Missouri family’s median income.

Additionally, rising costs of child care have outpaced inflation, leaving many families unable to afford care. More than 60% of Missouri families report having no formal child care arrangements.

In the absence of localized efforts to bring down the costs of child care, some employers are taking it into their own hands.

Mercy Hospital Springfield, the area’s second-largest employer, recognizes the difficulties.

“With more than 5,000 caregivers on our team in Springfield alone, we know finding quality, affordable child care is a struggle that can add an incredible amount of stress to the daily lives of our team,” the hospital system said in a statement to Springfield Business Journal.

Mercy opened an in-house child care center several years ago to help, and spots filled up immediately. The system also gives a child care stipend of $100 a month to any caregiver who uses the dependent care flexible spending account.

“Our goal is to help our caregivers who need assistance with child care costs, but no single employer can fill this need on their own,” the statement said. “We need to link arms as a community to find ways to help families secure affordable, quality child care.”

Eliminating red tape
The lack of accessible and affordable child care has been an ongoing conversation among Springfield business and community leaders.

On March 1, some 20 community members convened to talk about child care needs with three members of the Missouri House of Representatives: Jeremy Dean, representing the 132nd district; Stephanie Hein, 136th district; and Melanie Stinnett, 133rd.

Providers who were present outlined some of the regulatory issues that create hurdles for them. Stinnett noted many of these barriers could be eliminated without legislation, but by facilitating conversations with state agencies.

Jennifer Crouch, director of the Early Childhood Education Center, gave one example of a cumbersome regulation by noting that in an early childhood setting, if a child has a fever of 100 degrees, the law requires the child to be sent home.

But, said Crouch, a doctor recognizes a fever as measuring 100.4 degrees or higher. A temperature of 100 degrees may not signify illness, she notes – in fact, a child may be healthy and merely teething.

If a child is sent home, the requirement is to stay home for 24 hours – which means a parent who is a member of the workforce must miss not one, but two days of work, Crouch said.

Crouch, whose Ozarks Tech Early Childhood Education Center serves children birth to age 6 of students, faculty and staff, brought up another example. Years ago, she said, child care centers had to renew their licenses every two years, and it was a lot of paperwork. The state went to a system of nonrenewing licenses, which people in the industry looked at as a game-changer.

It wasn’t.

“What happened is it’s not called a license renewal,” Crouch said. “Now you have to do everything you would do for a license renewal, but it’s every year. How did that even happen?”

The change was intended to reduce burdens for child care providers, but instead, the burden was doubled.

Joe Gallant of Kids Win Missouri was also present at the forum. He noted there is a huge push in many states to deregulate early childhood systems in general.

“Some of it seems to be a little nefarious, to say the least,” he said.

But there is red tape that can be eliminated, he said, and it’s putting a huge burden on providers, and, by extension, on families.

Stinnett said she gets nervous about changing regulations because she doesn’t want to impact safety, but she is on board for changing issues related to inefficiency. This can be done through dialogue with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, she said, and legislation may not be required.

“I’ve been able to impact a lot of changes that aren’t a bill – you don’t necessarily need a bill,” she said. “To work on these inefficiency components, let’s go straight to them at the department and tell them where we see issues – and then if they don’t respond, maybe we need a bill.”

Hein recently proposed two House bills to address issues in early education. House Bill 934 would modify requirements for child care reimbursement, allowing providers to be paid on enrollment versus attendance. This would allow providers to bill for days when foster children are absent from the care setting, something that is not currently permitted.

And House Bill 933, also proposed by Hein, would modify income eligibility criteria for people receiving state-funded child care assistance.

Crouch said this bill could help the child care workforce. In an interview with SBJ after the forum, she said it used to be possible to offer a free slot for the child of a worker, but because facilities operate on such slim margins, that’s no longer possible.

In the child care workforce, according to Missouri Child Care Aware, the turnover rate ranges 26%-40%.

Hein said if a facility provides child care for one worker, it is able to open up slots for 13 additional kids.

“I filed that because of conversations that we’ve had like this – that’s where we get to be informed,” she said.