Innovative Practices
Read our stories of innovative practices in child care around the State of Minnesota. Contact the Office of Child Care Community Partnerships to have your area showcased.
Read our stories of innovative practices in child care around the State of Minnesota. Contact the Office of Child Care Community Partnerships to have your area showcased.
West Central Initiative, Marsha Erickson
CAPLP Child Care Aware, Maria Steen Child Care Connections Director and Katie Sonsthagen, Family Child Care Supports Coordinator
West Central Initiative's Early Childhood Initiative and the CAPLP Child Care Aware staff (along with other regional partners) have a long-standing relationship of troubleshooting child care issues, planning solutions and working together to implementing programs that best serve the early care and education system in west central Minnesota.
With input from several partners, CAPLP Child Care Aware received a Department of Human Services grant and took the lead, developing a program "hub" called Shared Services Alliance. As titled, this program is designed to congregate child care-related services in one "space" to allow family-based child care providers to access services and share resources with a goal of supporting the economic health of these small businesses. As the first project, the CAPLP Shared Services Alliance planned to overcome some of the key barriers that prevent family child care (FCC) providers from utilizing substitutes and assistant caregivers while also attempting to address some of the causes of burnout in the FCC profession specifically. The planning process found these barriers that prevent the use of substitutes:
Having access to a low-cost substitute or assistant caregiver has a dual goal. First, it is designed to improve the sustainability of FCC providers by giving them paid time off, while not needing to close their child care business for the children and their families. Secondly, FCC providers consistently cite the job's isolation and long hours as one reason that they leave the field. This program allows the provider to attend events and appointments during the day, or to bring a second trained adult into the care environment for an extra set of hands. Additionally, FCC providers tend to fall in the middle- to lower-income brackets, and the business model for child care does not create high profit margins. The Shared Services substitute programming was the best solution to address all these concerns.
The initial pilot of the FCC Shared Services Alliance, which began design in May 2022 and was launched in January 2023, was targeted within Becker County. To pilot the program, the partners felt they needed to concentrate on a smaller geographic area, working through logistics and program "bugs." Becker County was home to 60 licensed family child care (FCC) providers, and White Earth Early Childhood Program tribally licensed 18 FCC programs. White Earth Nation is geographically located on lands that Minnesota identifies as Becker & Mahnomen Counties. CAPLP's Shared Services Alliance Substitute Program was open to all Becker County & White Earth licensed FCC providers who had licenses in good standing. Additionally, Becker County had taken a momentous lead in bringing together community partners to address their community child care crisis. Becker County Commissioners invested $270,000 from the federal COVID relief packages (CARES and ARP) for start-up and ongoing grants to child care programs. They have a taskforce that meets monthly to discuss and address topics like the workforce, expansion, and retention efforts. Their needs assessment of current FCC providers indicated FCC programs needed access to resources to sustain their businesses; substitutes/a substitute pool was indicated as a high need. The overall community focus on child care was instrumental in implementing the pilot. Finally, key partners in this work, jointly serving the community—White Earth Early Childhood, MAHUBE-OTWA Community Action Partnership, West Central Initiative, & Essentia Health—all affirmed the need for this child care substitute service.
CAPLP Child Care Aware took on the responsibility of hiring part-time substitutes as CAPLP employees. They earn a competitive wage and accrue PTO as part-time employees. CAPLP Child Care Aware pays for required training and background checks, and keeps records on file for the county licensor for the approved subs. This eliminates the burden from individual FCC providers' plates. The FCC Support Coordinator designed a simple Microsoft Form to collect membership data (for evaluation purposes) and built an online reservation/booking system that providers are granted access to once they join the Alliance. Providers have appreciated the ease with which they can look at the shared calendar of availability and put a request in for a substitute within minutes.
The FCC Support Coordinator did the work of designing the membership and scheduling platforms. Free technology was used whenever available. The forms providers complete are done with Microsoft Forms, and the bookings calendar is through Microsoft Bookings, which links to employee Outlook calendars. It is important to note, however, that as the service grows, Child Care Aware is exploring other booking services that charge a fee but that seem to be able to handle the increased volume of subs and clients.
Grant funding through the Department of Human Services has been used to heavily subsidize the cost of the substitutes. The providers are charged $5/hour for the service, while the actual wage & benefits for the CAPLP subs costs run closer to $24.50/hour. Program organizers feel that keeping the service affordable is a requirement to make it accessible for providers.
The original one-year budget was approximately $70,000, which included the income generated by the service fees. The bulk of the budget went to the coordinator & substitute wages. One factor that was a bigger variable than anticipated was the cost for travel. Because of our hiring challenges, not all the subs were located within the targeted geographic area, and thus, mileage costs were higher. The budget was adjusted to anticipate greater travel costs in the second year. By the end of the first pilot year, we had eight FCC providers consistently using the service. This was lower than anticipated. However, the positive feedback from users and the incremental growth has led to expansion. Based on eight users over 9 months of actual subbing available, the cost currently is approximately $5,900 per client. As this is a shared service with the intent to reduce costs as the scale grows, we project this per client cost to be greatly reduced as more providers are served.
All partner input, including the family child care providers themselves, along with all theories and assumptions around this idea, told the organizers that this was a need. To get this pilot off the ground, it took a lot of time and relationship building.
The original design of the program was to hire one full-time substitute/coordinator. After facing the hiring challenges that many other agencies faced exiting the pandemic in 2022. CAPLP revised the plan to hire a 32 hour/week Substitute/Coordinator with the option to hire multiple part-time substitutes. Once the coordinator was hired, about 6 months into the pilot, more targeted work could take place. CAPLP initially found that the FCC providers were hesitant to open their care setting to someone they did not know. To help build relationships, CAPLP offered the first session for free as an orientation and assistant caregiver time. The substitute would work alongside the provider, getting to know the children, the space and the provider's routine. The assistant caregiver option allows the provider time to prepare lunch, do paperwork or other duties, while the assistant supervises the children.
The coordinator attended community meetings and spoke with area child care providers to spread the word about this new service. She also leaned into the Becker County Early Childhood Initiative partner (a program supported by West Central Initiative) to help recruit for the substitute pool. CAPLP partnered very closely with the Becker County Licensing agency (Sourcewell) to ensure that the protocols would meet all the licensing requirements. This piece also helped FCC providers feel secure in the legitimacy of the program. Over the course of the first year of the pilot, four additional part-time subs were hired. The coordinator does the onboarding and training, typically having a new sub shadow her or another of the more experienced subs before being available for solo bookings.