South Dakota's two largest cities are spending their state child care subsidies creatively, including on boot camps for child care workers and full-time jobs for child care entrepreneurs.
Both communities face a lack of available child care slots and struggle with affordable child care options for families, reducing economic productivity and forcing families to leave the workforce. You may not be able to get it.
Rapid City and Sioux Falls are two of 13 communities awarded child care grants from the Governor's Economic Development Office last month. Leveraging federal funding, the grants total more than $3.7 million to help communities find collaborative and innovative solutions to address child care needs across South Dakota.
Efforts range from improving the child care workforce to creating after-school programs and supporting continuing education for existing education providers.
“We want to see a better quality of life for everyone in our community,” said Brienne Manor, executive director of Startup Sioux Falls. “This crisis is affecting everyone, both directly and indirectly. We want to see better support for children. I want them to be able to return to work with confidence knowing that they are making a difference in society and being financially successful, and that putting their child in daycare doesn't mean they're ruined. I want you to know that.”
Startup Sioux Falls partners with Sioux Falls Development Foundation, Helpline Center and Lutheran Social Services to launch a small business accelerator program customized for child care providers to support providers in the metropolitan area funds resident childcare entrepreneurs. Mr. Manners said. Lutheran Social Services plans to launch its own child care development program targeting underserved communities in Sioux Falls, including Spanish-speaking, multilingual, refugee or immigrant families.
The state awarded the Sioux Falls collaboration just under $285,000 in funding, Manner said.
“Childcare workers are not necessarily small business owners, so they don't necessarily want the same resources as other small businesses or entrepreneurs,” Manner says. “We are looking at this as a more economical approach. We are providing the tools for success and building a community of individuals who can support each other as we move forward.”
Elevate Rapid City will use most of its $255,000 grant this year to host a series of child care provider boot camps throughout the Black Hills region, said the nonprofit's housing and community development manager. Laura Jones said.
Jones said the boot camp will cover basics such as branding and marketing, accounting best practices, and the requirements and benefits of becoming a state-licensed provider. Another portion of the funding will be used as grants to help existing providers expand their facilities and obtain state licensing.
“The secondary goal of the entire grant is to get more home service providers to register with the state,” Jones said. “We have no idea how many unlicensed providers there are, and we have no way of knowing how many spots are covered by unregistered providers.”
Both Jones and Maner said community health care providers are interested in long-term policy solutions in addition to one-time cash from the state.
“This problem is not solved at the local level, but we are doing everything we can and deploying the resources we have to support our communities from within,” Manner said. It added that providers would benefit from temporary financial support. country level. “It is in the best interest of our economy that we take a hard look at how we prioritize child care when it comes to the workforce, public health, and everything else. Our state leadership is listening. We hope you will be a good advocate for us in Washington, D.C.”
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