Child care accessibility gets attention

Aug. 24--CLINTON -- Community members gathered together this week to discuss the accessibility of child care options in the Clinton region.

The Clinton Regional Development Corporation on Wednesday hosted a Community Child Care forum at the Felix Adler Children's Discovery Center. A survey was previously done by the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque of its seven county region, including Clinton County. The survey sought to answer how the foundation can support the economic growth of rural regions. The study found gaps in accessible and affordable child care in eastern Iowa.

"We tried to get educators and agencies and parents and employers and all the different people in the community that need to care about child care around the table to get people out of their silos and thinking more broadly about how do we invest in child care the same way we invest in other things in our community that are needed for economic vitality," Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque Representative Jason Neises said. "We invest in sewer systems. We invest in roads. We invest in power grids. We invest in public education that largely supports our workforce growth. What about child care? How are we fitting all those things together and making it part of one big system that supports the vitality of our community?"

State Rep Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton, said the child care topic is not given any priority at the state level. She believes Iowa is about the worst state to live in for a lower to middle income working parent needing access to affordable and dependable child care.

The median family income for Clinton County in 2016 was $49,850, according to the State Data Center.

"The federal requirements are not bad," Wolfe said. "It's like between 250 and maybe 300 percent of your average household income you could still qualify for child care subsidies under federal law. Under Iowa law it's 145 percent of the average household income. If you make a dollar more than that then you lose all your subsidies. And that is the lowest in the country. And what that means is because there's a smaller pool of working parents who are able to afford daycare there are fewer daycare providers who are willing to invest the time and money to open up daycare establishments across Iowa because they know it's going to be harder to find people who can afford to basically use their services."

Wolfe stated she is going to do everything she can to increase the eligibility requirements so more working parents will get some help from the state and federal governments to help pay for child care.

"Right now we have a child care cliff. Right now you make one dollar too much and you're off all eligibility," Wolfe said. "The other thing I really want to do is work on a step down. So if you, you know, go from 145 percent of eligibility to 150, well you get less but you don't lose everything."

Neises said the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque worked with a group of students from MIT, who were in Dubuque for two weeks. They looked into the cost of employee retention, such as training costs, orientation costs and the hiring of a search firm.

"If you didn't have to spend that money could you spend a portion of it on providing child care benefits for employees," Neises said. "If that's a factor, and that's money. They said oh, geez, I guess it costs me $1.5 million a year to hire new employees. Maybe I should take 10 percent of that. I mean can you imagine? Ten percent would take care of the child care needs for all their employees. So how can we quantify it in that way. And there are tools to do this."

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