Addressing child care shortage 'takes a village'

FINDLAY — There isn't nearly enough child care available in Hancock County, and what is available is hard for families to afford. It's affecting employers, too, as employees increasingly can't work because they have no one to care for their children. But the community is coming together to discuss the issue and work toward solutions. Joel Potts, chief government and external affairs officer at the Ohio Department of Children and Youth, was the speaker at a Wednesday child care event hosted by the Findlay-Hancock County Community Foundation. Potts said his department has been working to address the issue on the state level, creating public-private partnerships and the Child Care Choice Voucher Program. But, he said, there is no one solution. Each community will need to work together, combining different programs and sources of funding. "It is going to take a community approach," he said. Investing in child care makes a difference, though, he said. Children in quality child care systems are more likely to enter kindergarten ready to learn. And children who score higher on the state's Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, in turn, score seven times higher on science and five times higher on English proficiency by third grade. "We also know that when kids enter school ready to learn, they will be less likely to drop out, they will be less likely to be teen parents, they will be more likely to graduate and go on to college, they will have increased earnings in their lifetime," he said. In Ohio, the average cost of child care for a family with two children is about $22,000 per year, Potts said. The average is about $10,000 per child, or $11,000 per infant – but that's just an average and some people pay more. Potts mentioned an employee of his department who is spending more than $18,000 per year. "The average cost of tuition in the state of Ohio is $13,000," he said. "It is costing parents as much to send their kids to child care as it would cost them to send their children to college 18 years later. You can get a college loan. But there are no loans for child care." About 10% of the income of a two-parent household, or 39% of the income of a single parent goes to child care – more than mortgage or car payments, he said. A panel discussion followed Potts' presentation. Brittney Bills-Darby, representing Ohio Logistics, said many industries employ an hourly workforce and require consistent staffing and predictable attendance to function. But the cost of child care may be a challenge for employees' wages. Additionally, many manufacturers operate 24 hours a day, and there are few child care options for parents working second or third shift, she said. Randy Galbraith, director of Hancock County Job and Family Services, said that for child care to be available for parents working second or third shift, we need more child care, period. And we don't have enough. "Right now I have 54 kids that are eligible for publicly funded child care, and there's no slots for them," he said. "And it's usually closer to 70." As Ohio has been emphasizing kindergarten readiness, it has also increased regulations around child care, Galbraith said. New policies around what curriculum must be provided or how the facility itself must be designed have made it difficult for smaller child care providers to stay in business, he said. Galbraith noted that many employers have a system where employees get "points" for absences, and too many points can mean they'll lose their job. Employees know this and often leave their job on their own in anticipation of being fired, then go work somewhere else until they again have too many absences because they must care for their children. "If you knock 50% of the workforce out right now (because one parent is staying home), our employers are going to be hurting in a way that they've not been hurt in a long, long time," Galbraith said. "This is the skin in the game that the employers have already, whether they realize it or not." Bills-Darby also shared her own family's experience. In 2023, when Bills-Darby was six months pregnant, the person caring for her two young children gave the family a 30-day notice. Bills-Darby and her husband then scrambled to find child care for three children. She said they succeeded largely because they have a strong support system and connections in the community, and the experience opened her eyes to how stressful this must be for families without such resources. Her older children are now ages five and seven and both in school, but they, too, will need somewhere to be during the day throughout the summer. There are activities like camps for children whose parents work full-time, but they can be expensive and involve a fair amount of transportation and other logistics, Bills-Darby said. Children are "our greatest blessing," she said. "But the stress, the guilt and the constant challenges that you face are very, very real." Kari Redman of the Findlay Family YMCA pointed out that many child care providers are nonprofits grappling with a financial balancing act: it costs money to run their program and pay their staff (and they require a significant number of staff if there are a lot of children, since child care must follow strict adult-to-child ratios). At the same time, they can't charge too much in tuition or it will become unaffordable for families. And there aren't enough people working in this field, Redman said. She said she has encouraging experts in this field to help teach others. "We need more people who want to choose this as a career," Redman said, adding later, "It's a hard job. You have to love it." McComb Mayor Cathy Schroll shared the story of how the village had worked together to create a new child care center. McComb previously had several great in-home child care providers, Schroll said. "Then, we all know, COVID hit," she said. "The world shut down." And when it opened back up, many of those providers chose not to re-open. As the village council began looking at a strategic plan for the community, they kept hearing "child care was at the very top" of community needs, she said. A team began working on the issue, and the community received a $1 million grant. The Little Panthers Learning Center opened in August 2024 and now serves 89 children. Earlier this year, the Hancock County Childcare Collaborative announced they were developing the Hancock County Childcare Tri-Share Program to support working families. In a tri-share model, the costs are shared by families, employers and the community. The Community Foundation has committed $50,000 to the Hancock County Childcare Fund, an endowed fund that will continue to grow, and $100,000 to the Tri-Share Childcare Fund, a more short-term fund to support families who do not qualify for publicly funded child care through subsidies. Anyone interested in donating can find more information at https://www.community-foundation.com/funds Findlay Mayor Christina Muryn said the tri-share model is important not only because of the support it provides for families, "but I think it really does open businesses' eyes to kind of the burden and struggle of child care". Sometimes employers may just see that their employees aren't showing up for work, but not understand the bigger picture around why, she said. She added that community members as a whole can help and recognize that "it takes a village". Muryn said her mother, who is retired, takes care of Muryn's sister's children – but she has also suggested she let neighbor families know that she is available in an emergency. She encouraged others who are able to do this to offer similar support. A recording of the event will be posted on the Community Foundation's website and YouTube channel soon.