by Dennis Dalman
A lack of daycare for children affects not just panicking parents but virtually everyone in society in one way or another. Just one example is employers. Many of them struggle to retain employees who, because of lack of daycare, quit their jobs and stay at home with one or more children.
Those points were brought home strongly by two employees of United Way of Central Minnesota. The Newsleader recently conducted an interview with Sara Hagen, community childcare coordinator; and Alexis Lutgen, director of financial stability and co-chair of mental-health work.
“It (daycare) is a community issue,” Hagen said. “It affects everybody, all of us.”
Currently, there is a huge need for at least 5,300 daycare openings in United Way’s coverage area – Stearns and Benton counties and parts of Sherburne and Wright counties.
The COVID-19 pandemic, Hagen noted, wreaked havoc on in-home daycare businesses, many of the providers cutting back or quitting for good. There are multiple reasons for that, the two women said: licensing hoops and hurdles, other related costs, the need to take and/or retake daycare classes required for licensing, too many sacrifices in time with many in-home providers unable to take a weekday off. Those factors – and more – can all lead in time to burnout.
In the post COVID-19 period, the lack of daycare persists, especially in smaller towns and rural areas.
Some frantic and discouraged working parents have called up to 150 places trying to find just one spot open for one child, Hagen noted. Some parents have their children in more than one daycare center or home. There is a severe shortage of spots for infants, Lutgen said. Some daycare centers have up to a three-year waiting list for infants. It’s become so bad that some couples do their family planning around that dire fact.
Some parents must drive more than an hour to get to daycare homes or centers located a long distance from their homes. In some cases, parents must wake up their children as early as 5 a.m. to get them long distances to daycare providers. Lutgen, who lives in Avon, said that in nearby Albany there is only one daycare center and that parents are desperately pleading for more daycare options.
It can cost parents up to $10,000 to $14,000 annually for good quality daycare. And the providers, the two women said, are not seeing huge profits from those payments because the costs they spend for their daycare facilities and other needs keep rising. Reimbursement rates for providers do not keep pace with inflation. Some in-home daycare operators do not even have health insurance – unless they can be on a spouse’s policy.
Like in-home daycare providers, burnout is also happening to some degree among staff members at commercial daycare centers. In some cases, those workers do not get any recognition, the kind that brings better wages and benefits.
“The system is broken,” Hagen said. “There must be increased recognition and wages for the profession (daycare service).”
Hope rises
Fortunately, there is hope on the horizon, according to Lutgen and Hagen, who said more and more people are realizing how vitally important daycare service is to children, parents, relatives, employers – indeed to all people and relationships in a healthy society.
Hagen and Lutgen have had many brain-storm sessions with so many people from all walks of life, including legislators. So many are now understanding the absolute urgency in strengthening daycare opportunities and options. And there is a legislative effort to find solutions to the crisis.
Some proposed solutions are the following:
Working with some businesses to help create on-site childcare service.
Flexible spending accounts to help spend down the costs.
Increasing recognition and wages for providers.
“There are many facets to the crisis,” Lutgen said. “We are working with all people and discussing all ideas. That keeps us hopeful because we are surrounded by people who feel passionately about the need for daycare. Minnesota is doing a lot to find solutions.”
Hagen agreed, saying efforts to increase and strengthen the daycare profession are moving forward.
“We are lucky to be living in an area with like-minded people dedicated to solving this crisis,” she said. “They understand it is a community issue. It affects everybody.”
