MADISON, Wis. — Republicans’ ambivalence toward addressing Wisconsin’s ongoing child care crisis was on full display this week after reporting from the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram highlighted the stress Wisconsin child care providers and families face in the Chippewa Valley.
The new look inside Wisconsin’s child care crisis comes as JD Vance suggested this week that the solution to the high cost and low availability of child care is to ask Grandma and Grandpa to take over child care responsibilities. Wisconsin Republicans are in lockstep with JD Vance, last year blocking funding for Wisconsin’s Child Care Counts program to help providers keep their doors open and keep costs low. Relying on family for unpaid child care or lowering certification requirements for providers is not a real solution to Wisconsin’s workforce shortages or child care crisis, but instead of finding real solutions to the challenges Wisconsinites are facing, out of touch Republicans are leaving our working families behind.
Leader-Telegram: Families and Childcare Workers are at their Limit
By: Angela Curio
EAU CLAIRE — It is no secret that parents are having difficulty locating and affording quality childcare, not just in Eau Claire but also throughout the country. In July, the Eau Claire City-County Health Department released a list of the top five health priorities in the county with lack of access to childcare listed just under poor mental health.
“Parenting is really hard and it’s harder than it used to be,” said Dr. Jennifer Eddy who is both a physician and the director of the Family Resource Center in Eau Claire. “Parents are spending more time at work and they’re spending more time caring for their kids. There’s even a bigger backdrop of an epidemic of loneliness, and on top of it, when you need somebody to watch your kids, it’s very expensive and it’s hard to find.”
The Wisconsin Economic Development Institute released a report entitled “Childcare in Wisconsin and its impact on Workforce and the Economy” in 2023. According to the report, the lack of access to childcare is contributing to employers having difficulty hiring new employees, and that it was affecting their current employees availability and productivity.
“When we interviewed for a new parent educator position, we were turned down by somebody who said the cost of childcare was more than we were offering them for the position. They couldn’t afford to go to work,” said Eddy. “Many parents are forced to stay home because they can’t afford daycare.”
What makes the issue more complicated is that childcare centers often can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage.
“It’s a very complicated problem because in order to have high quality daycare, you need to increase the salaries of daycare workers, which increases the cost of daycare, which is already unaffordable,” said Eddy.
Valerie Rust, who has been a licensed childcare provider for the last seven years providing childcare out of her home, said that the low wages reduces the quality of care as it contributes to high turnover rates in daycare centers.
“Childcare workers need to be paid more so that they can be consistent,” said Rust. She stressed that having a consistent caregiver is “crucial to (children’s) lifelong attachment and learning for the rest of their lives. If there’s a constant change in the person who’s caring for them, it’s trauma-inducing. It’s cortisol going through their system, and they’re just stressed.”
She said that while in-home licensed centers can provide more consistent caregiving at a lower cost, the shortage of care facilities is universal among centers of both larger daycares as well as smaller in-home centers.
“(Parents are) finding difficulty locating any quality childcare,” she said. “There isn’t a lot of availability of family childcare centers simply because it’s so hard to get licensed, stay licensed, and do all the paperwork involved to keep up with the constantly changing rules and regulations.”
She talked about how overwhelmed she was when first starting her business.
“There’s about two or three different agencies or more who are trying to help you with one thing or another,” she said. “I was so confused when I first started, because I didn’t know who I was supposed to help with what. It’s expensive to get started too. There were a couple times I thought, ‘Is this worth it?’”
She said that “If the state was serious about trying to set up more family centers, the thing they would have to do to entice people to do it would be to provide an advisor on how to get through all the rules.”
She also said it would be helpful if there were available funds to help providers set up their business, whether it be for purchasing a fire extinguisher, fire alarms, toys, or other start-up costs.
While she didn’t say how much she earns running her center, she said that with all the costs, it still isn’t much of a living wage. Before her husband was retired, they relied primarily on his income. Since his retirement, he has helped with the business, allowing them to earn a little extra money in addition to their other income.
She did say that the benefit of working at a big center is that as an employee, you get breaks.
“We work eleven hours a day,” she said. “It’s a lot. We tag team, (but) it was all on me for five of the seven years. And so it’s nice in a center (where) you can take your lunch break and literally leave.”
According to “Childcare in Wisconsin and its Impact on Workforce and the Economy,” childcare workers in Wisconsin earn an average of $11 to $13 an hour and rarely have access to standard benefits. 26 percent of center providers and 34 percent of family providers receive at least one form of public assistance. The report also said that a lack of childcare workers is forcing regulated childcare providers to close classrooms and cut their hours of service.
“Without support around the childcare staffing crisis, 16 percent of group childcare programs reported they were facing closure due to the ongoing issues of not having qualified staff,” the report said.
Rust said she and her husband would be retiring from the childcare business next June.
“We’re ready to retire,” she said. “He’s 70 and I’m close behind.”
