The resounding theme of the 2023 Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Book is childcare shortages and unaffordability.
In Missouri, the number of childcare deserts increased by more than 100% from pre-pandemic days to the summer of 2020.
The Casey Report showed the average annual cost of center-based toddler care in the state of $8,900 consumes around 22% of a single mother’s income and 7% of a married couple’s.
Amanda Coleman, vice president of early childhood and family development for the Community Partnership of the Ozarks, said in their area, it is not so much a space issue as an employability issue. “We have centers in our area that are not full, and classrooms are closed, because they can’t find qualified staff, or just staff in general, to fill those classrooms,” Coleman observed.
The Casey report showed 10% of Missouri’s children have a family member who had to change jobs last year related to childcare issues.
Dana Carroll, early childhood consultant and outgoing vice president for the Community Partnership of the Ozarks, said they have a campaign underway to inform Missourians about the severity of the childcare crisis. She agreed with Coleman a lot of it comes down to wages, especially for the high-quality teachers the state’s young children should have.
Carroll argued there is a need for local, state, and federal involvement. At the local level, she sees a role for businesses. “Manufacturers and other businesses are going to have to be able to say, ‘Can I find a way to help support this? Can I offset some of the costs that child care is incurring? Can I help with repairs, rent, and picking up some of those infrastructure kinds of things to help make it work?'” Carroll contended.
Acknowledging this could be “a hard pill to swallow,” Carroll noted, saying it may become “one of the costs of doing business.”
Dana Brown-Ellis, executive director of Caring Communities in East Prairie, pointed to barriers her organization has faced during five years of trying to open a child care center. “We realized really quickly that with the rules and regulations; the compliance issues that the state put on daycare centers, it’s almost impossible for not-for-profits like us to open up one,” Brown-Ellis lamented.
Brown-Ellis stressed they are cautiously optimistic their center will be open within the next two years. Meanwhile, in spite of the success of their Workforce Program, some parents in their area have no choice but to stay home. “We’re getting them completely skilled up, but if it’s a single mother, she can’t go to work,” Brown-Ellis recounted. “We couldn’t put anybody hardly to work during COVID because of what limited spots we had, when COVID hit, daycares couldn’t afford to do the restrictions, so they simply shut down.”
