Chasing Child Care: Regional shortage, costs create struggle for parents

Sept. 24--TRAVERSE CITY -- Abbie Rosinski may be on maternity leave, but mornings in her cozy Grawn home begin promptly at 7:30 a.m.

By that time, the new mom is awake and ready for another day with her 3-month-old daughter, Emmie, who keeps Rosinski plenty busy. But the daily routine of caring for her newborn is now coupled with a new task Rosinski thought she'd squared away months ago: A frantic search for child care.

Rosinski, a teacher at Traverse City Area Public Schools, planned to return to her classroom from maternity leave in October and found a spot for Emmie at an in-home day care provider slated to be licensed by then. Rosinski was less than two weeks shy of her return when she got the call: The providers had overestimated the number of kids they could take in, and didn't have space for her daughter.

"When you're looking at two weeks, it's really overwhelming, especially when you've already called everywhere," she said.

The notice left her scrambling for child care amid a regional shortage that often forces parents to begin searching months before their child is born. Rosinski started looking the first time around in January, months before her due date in late May. She and her husband had waded through lengthy wait lists and high prices fueled by increasingly strict regulations and a dwindling number of caretakers.

"I've spent countless hours just researching and searching for day cares ... knowing we might have to pay a little more because of the shortage to find someone who can do a good job," Rosinski said. "I might end up having to extend my maternity leave."

Great Start to Quality coordinator Mary Manner said the pinch has only grown worse since she first noticed it in 2014, when the nonprofit, which aims to connect families with child care, began fielding increasing calls from parents in need of infant care.

"There's a big gap between the number of children in care and the number that need it," Manner said.

A 2017 Great Start survey of licensed child care providers in Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Antrim, Benzie and Kalkaska counties supports her claim. The nonprofit found of roughly 1,100 children with both parents working outside the home, only 660 were in licensed child care.

Nowhere to go

Rosinski was about five months pregnant when she began searching for child care, which fellow parents were quick to point out was not soon enough.

"They were like 'Uh, what are you doing?' You need to start looking now," she said. "I believed them but I didn't know to what extent."

Rosinski's fears were confirmed when she was met with yearslong waitlists at every turn. Rosinski said she is No. 16 on the waitlist for Teddy Bear Daycare's infant room and No. 7 at Central Day Daycare, where she can expect to wait up to 2 years for her spot to open up.

"The biggest shortage that we see right now is for infants and toddlers," Manner said. "The waitlist for infant care is about a year long."

Much of that shortage stems from state regulations limiting the number of infants a child care center or in-home provider can take. The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs allows up to nine infants per room in a child care center, but requires a ratio of one caretaker for every four infants.

That means day cares like Bay View Childcare Center can take only eight infants at a time, said Administrator Carly Lafreniere. The center, which opened in September, filled up almost immediately after it was approved in April -- its infant room now boasts a 42-family waitlist.

"We don't have any openings for the next four years," Lafreniere said. "By the time these kids get off the waitlist, they will be in preschool."

Waitlists that long aren't an option for Jennifer Hansen, who was forced to quit her job at Menards when she couldn't find care for her 11-month-old daughter, Chloe. Hansen said she's lucky to get more than an hour of sleep between caring for her daughter and the job she picked up working nights at Meijer. She knows her lifestyle isn't sustainable.

"Right now we are living comfortably, but if I get so exhausted to where I can't do this anymore, I don't know what we're going to do," she said.

Lengthy waitlists aren't her only roadblock. Hansen said her monthslong search for a licensed child care provider yielded rates from $45 to $60 per day -- far outside what her Menards paycheck could afford.

"I would have to get a loan just to be able to go to work and pay for day care," Hansen said. "How are you supposed to pay your rent, pay (for) your cars and still get food on the table? It just seems impossible."

The financial toll of child care -- especially for a newborn -- is one felt throughout the region. Parents in Grand Traverse County can expect to shell out $714 each month per infant, according to the Food Bank Council of Michigan's 2017 Self Sufficiency Standard report. The standard measures how much income a family needs to cover basic expenses like housing, child care, health care and food.

Grand Traverse County's self-sufficiency standard for two-parent families with an infant ranked ninth highest the state, with nearly $50,000 needed to make ends meet. Housing and child care alone made up more than half of those expenses. Leelanau County came in even higher at No. 3 on the list, with more than $54,000 needed per household.

Parents like Hansen who can't afford the high costs often see unlicensed caretakers as their only option.

"It's honestly easier to find the unlicensed caretakers," said Hansen, though she still has to "feel a person out and really know them" before trusting them with her child.

She recently began taking Chloe to an unlicensed caretaker twice a week for $30 per day. The situation is not ideal -- it's still a 45-minute drive from her house -- but it allows Hansen a few extra hours of much-needed sleep.

But the world of unlicensed care didn't always work so well for Hansen. After Chloe was born, she had been desperately searching for child care when she found an unlicensed provider at just $20 per day. That lasted three weeks before she pulled her daughter from the program, claiming her daughter had been left all alone in a dark room when she came to pick her up and that her daughter had been left screaming and crying long enough to lose her voice twice, resulting in trips for urgent care.

"It took me awhile to realize that when you get cheaper day cares, you have to expect what you pay for," she said.

Safety at a cost

Amber Rousseau, a licensed child care provider, understands the frustration of parents like Hansen. But the owner of Blessings Childcare LLC also knows that offering in-home child care comes at a hefty cost.

There's the liability insurance -- which can range from $300 to upwards of $700 a year -- the cost of yearly CPR and first-aid renewals, licensing changes, food programs, safety inspections and purchasing the proper equipment to meet a long list of LARA regulations that only continues to grow, Rousseau said.

"There are just so many little things," she said. "There's so many underlying costs that they don't see."

Manner noted ever-changing state regulations cover almost everything about a facility -- from food requirements to window heights -- and the cost to meet them builds up quickly.

"As those regulations have gotten tighter, more people have either found it economically impossible to keep up or in some cases, they've actually been prohibited from renewing their license," she said.

The alternative is to compensate for the extra costs with higher rates or forgoing renewing their license altogether.

Rousseau said her rate was lower when she first opened in 2016 before she knew what it would cost to maintain her in-home day care in line with state regulations. She chose to raise her rates to $35 per day but said she's noticed a rise of unlicensed caretakers, whom she suspects have started taking business away from her.

"There's no overhead or anybody checking in, so they can offer cheaper prices," Rousseau said. "We all would love to do that, but we are in a spot where our overhead takes up a lot of our money."

She initially opened her day care for ages 12 months to 5 years old because of the strict regulations required for infants under 12 months, but said a shortage in that age group forced her to start taking infants to keep her six day care slots full.

Rousseau said she's not against unlicensed providers, but fears the lack of regulation could be unsafe for children.

"It's just the fear we have of what they don't know, and the safety of what parents don't know because they're in a bind," she said.

No pay, no progress

The median pay for a child care worker hovers just under $20,000 in Michigan.

If that number doesn't rise, Manner doesn't see the state's child care gap closing any time soon.

"The wages are low, the hours are long, there are no benefits," she said. "There's not a lot of incentives to stay in the business."

LaFreniere agreed. Her child care center is part of Bayview Wesleyan Church, which covers most of her overhead costs and allows her to pay workers between $11.50 and $12.50 per hour. She knows most centers aren't as lucky.

"You lose money in infant care," she said. "It costs to pay somebody to be a quality staff member, but then you have to turn around and charge families."

One solution to that is offering more families access to federal subsidies, Manner said. Michigan had the country's lowest income eligibility levels in 2016, only offering subsidies to households making 120 percent of poverty level. That limit increased to 125 percent in 2017 -- with 130 percent slated for the 2018 budget -- but it still pales in comparison to the national standard 225 percent limit, Manner said.

"There is a recognition that there is money in the system and we can help more low-income working families access quality care for their kid," Manner said.

Adjusting to a need

Tentcraft employees don't need to worry about finding child care right away, thanks to a new program the company launched in January allowing new parents to take their infants to work.

"We, along with many others, identified day care as a social economic issue that employers don't necessarily tackle in northern Michigan so we wanted to address that," said Human Resource Director Rob Hanel.

The program allows employees to take infants between the ages of 8 weeks and 6 months to work, where they are required to be under parent supervision at all times, Hanel said. The company installed changing tables in each bathroom and made a "new mothers room" with amenities to breast-feed and store milk.

Other local employers like Munson Healthcare and Grand Traverse Resort and Spa are combating the shortage with employee child care programs. Hanel said the infant program's success inspired Tentcraft to look into an on-site day care.

"That's a much bigger beast, but it has inspired us to at least look into what it would take," he said.

The Grand Traverse County Economic Development Corporation also has talked about turning the Governmental Center's empty lower level into a day care, said board Chairman Warren Call. He said the EDC could potentially rent the space to a day care provider at a reduced or subsidized rate, but would still need to look into the renovations necessary to make it useable.

"One of the hangups to economic development, especially in this town, is lack of child care," Call said. "We thought if we could help address that in a small way, it would be beneficial."

But as companies and local government struggle to address the shortage, parents have taken to social media for a quicker solution. Jill Achard formed the Facebook group "Looking for Licensed Daycares in Northern Michigan" six years ago when she had trouble finding day care for her son. The group now boasts more than 2,000 members and is busier than ever, she said.

"I'm seeing more posts to the page in the last year than the previous years," Achard said.

Rosinski joined the group the first time around when calls to friends and day care centers yielded no luck. She'll monitor the group again in the coming weeks while frantically searching for a new center or in-home child care provider to take Emmie.

"I have a couple leads but it's definitely difficult," Rosinski said. "I'm still searching furiously."

Voices

-- "I went on the Grand Traverse County licensed day care page, and went through every single day care provider in Grand Traverse County. I would look up the addresses, see if it was within a 10-mile radius, look at the reports then call to see about openings. I called 30 day cares, ending up on three waiting lists with one callback." -- Janell Scott-Devol

-- "I looked for almost a year, and we're on many waitlists and still haven't had any callbacks." -- Beatrice Draper, Elk Rapids.

-- "I've been looking for child care in the Mesick and Traverse City area for 2 years. The cost of child care is so insane, it doesn't even make sense for most parents to go back to work ... I've had to work way part time just to be able to make a few dollars and get out of the house for social interaction." -- Samantha Lane, Mesick

-- "For our family, I stay home ... for the desire to want to raise my children instead of a stranger ... Even if I went back to work, there aren't any openings for two out of three of my children. So I couldn't work even if I wanted to." -- Christine Hollenbeck, Traverse City

-- "I have been on the waitlist at Central Day Care for more than two years for child care!" -- Stephanie Kleinow, Traverse City

-- "I'm a single, first-time mom and finding child care was beyond stressful. I ended up changing my career plans to better suit available child care options." -- Jenna Stoddard, Traverse City

-- "I have twins and it was next to impossible to find care." -- Chalice Kopacki, Traverse City

-- "My husband and I choose to work opposite shifts, because between being on waitlists and putting two children in child care it would take my entire full-time paycheck." -- Ariel Diamond, Traverse City

-- "I've been a provider since 2005. I'm full with a waiting list. I wish I could help more families but my neighbors fought me on moving up to a group license." -- Amy Toepfer Middaugh

Editor's note: Quotes have been edited for clarity and spelling.

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