MISSOULA - Developing solutions for childcare in Missoula are coming at a dire time, as providers struggle to maintain their business and families can’t afford or can’t find care.
The barriers to finding childcare and providing it are connected in many ways. For those on the frontlines of providing care for children, solutions have to start at the highest level of funding and legislation.
Childcare providers face many challenges, whether they work out of their own homes or at a large center. Staffing is one of the largest issues in these professions, as it is a largely underpaid field.
“It's one of the lowest paid jobs in the state, if not the lowest paid job, even with your degree,” Stephanie Brunner, director at Fort Courage Child Care, says. “The discrepancy in the pay for a degree compared to other degrees — most people with a degree in early childhood, unless you're working through the university or some funded program, aren't making much more than their staff.”
Brunner has worked in childcare for many years and ran her own at-home daycare for a period of time. Despite having a bachelor's degree in early childhood development, she says she was paid just as much as her staff was at her home-based center.
Compared to running a facility out of her home, she says working in a large center can be a bit easier.
“I thought, ‘oh home child care is going to be a breeze,’ and it is just as hard if not harder than being a center director,” she says. “Because you are the teacher, you are the one on one. Plus you're doing all of the clerical work, all of the shopping, everything.”
BriAnne Moline has been running Wild Wonders — a home-based care center since 2017 — has seen those difficulties firsthand. She found her passion for care giving after her first son was born and later attended the University of Montana Western for an associate's degree.
After starting her business, Moline was forced to leave two of her living spaces. Her first program was shut down because it violated her community covenant rules, and her second was closed because the property manager did not want the liability of a daycare.
“I was faced with either closing my business which was supporting me and my three children at the time, or relocating,” she says.
Liability for the property owner shouldn’t be a problem, Moline explains, because she has liability insurance for the child care business herself. Still, her daycare was the main factor in the property manager terminating her lease.
“In this field, it's extremely hard to find property owners that want to rent to you because of the liability issue for children,” Moline says.
After finding a permanent spot in 2019, Moline has grown as a group-licensed facility with about 10 children. She chooses to keep her ratio lower than capacity, which would be 15 kids because she believes it provides a higher level of care.
While she loves her business and the community of families she has built, financially and personally there have been many obstacles.
“You have your own family, and this is shared space. So for example, my school-aged children are home for the summer. And they you know, they want to be able to relax in the living room and watch a TV show but that's where I run my program from. And so you know, there's some resentment from your family,” Moline says. “It definitely was a factor in my relationship ending with my husband. So there's some ramifications there.”
Moline is now living on one income and says she is struggling financially. She needs to work multiple jobs to support her family rather than raise her prices.
“We, all of us, have two or three jobs, in addition to running a program, and we feel very bad for having to raise our rates to families.”
The goal to keep prices low for parents is also at the forefront of Brunner’s mind at Fort Courage, especially as she struggles to keep staff wages adequate.
“We can't provide our staff more unless we charge the parents more and it's getting to a point that if we continue to raise our rates or anyone else in town, people aren't going to be able to afford care,” she says.
More than pay, employees in childcare don’t have many benefits, like insurance or 401K, which forces many workers to leave the field.
“I don’t know what to do in order to get people into the field really, a lot of times that realistically is just finding people that love it and don't necessarily need to make that income,” Brunner says.
There is some help from state and federal funding for childcare centers, including the STARS to Quality program, which awards facilities with money if they complete extra training and licensing to provide the best possible care. The amount of money is based on a ranking system out of five.
Brunner’s home-based center was a STAR 3, so she received around $1,300 per quarter. The money had to be used for staff incentives.
Other federal aid comes from the Child and Adult Care Food Program Participants and Sponsors initiative from the United States Department of Public Health and Human Services. This also works on a ranking system but is based on the income level of the surrounding community.
For example, Brunner’s home-based center was a Tier 1 and received $1,000 per month for meals and snacks. Brunner says that if she were to be dropped to a Tier 2, the funding would likely be cut in half.
Yet, even with federal assistance, Brunner says daycare centers are in an unstable position.
“There's many times that the STARS money has been used or cut and gone to other things in Montana,” she says. “So the harsh reality is that there just has to be a lot more in terms of help funding for programs, and I don't know where that comes from. I mean, that's definitely a higher level question through the state and the federal government.”
With more funding, staff could possibly be paid more, keeping those who are good with children in the field, allowing centers to fill their capacity while maintaining ratio and preventing burnout and under-staffed facilities.
“It's so hard, especially right now with hiring staff, and having so many jobs out there where they can make more money and coming in and seeing well in this I can be burnt out, I can get tired so easily. And I could go do this for $20 an hour,” Brunner says.
The capacity at Fort Courage is 106 children, but they currently only have around 90, because ratios of staff to children are a necessity. For infants, there needs to be one staff for every four babies. Fort Courage has 12 infants daily, so that's three staff in one room alone.
For 2-to-3 year olds, the ratio of children to staff has to be 8-to-1, and for preschool, that ratio is 10-to-1.
“So until we can get more staff, we can't always go to full capacity because it can be hard to be able to staff the rooms right now because of the discrepancy in pay,” Brunner says. “We have to have those numbers. If we have those kids, you have to have those staff, period.”
For parents, paying $1,000 a month per child for care can be too much. But even for families that are able to afford the cost, finding quality child care can be the biggest obstacle.
Catherine Wiechmann and her husband, Daniel Fleming, have gone through four daycares in the last 10 months with their 18-month-old daughter.
“It’s hard to take them into childcare, but what’s harder is we’ve had no consistency, so we’ll get her into something, and then they close, or something doesn’t work out, and then she’s back at home with us, and now she’s 18 months old and basically never consistently been in childcare,” Wiechmann says.
Both parents work full-time, so Wiechmann has been forced to work remotely and care for her daughter at the same time.
“It was hard, it was a lot. I felt like I wasn’t being a great mom, but I also wasn’t being a great employee, and I just had to do the best I could,” she says.
Once summer came, the couple was afforded a breath of relief, as Fleming works as a teacher and has summers off.
Still, the family wasn't looking to put their daughter in childcare just because it’s easier on their working schedule, they believe it will be beneficial for her development and learning.
“We feel it’s important for her to get to spend time with other kids, and get out of our house,” Fleming says.
Weichmann was finally able to secure child care through her work but is still nervous about the long-term reliability. The couple says they are happy to pay the cost for care but want to make sure it’s quality.
“With this lack of care, and it being so like, basically you take what you can get, is you end up not being able to really find care that meets all your needs and parameters,” Weichmann says. “We would rather have no care than bring her to a place that we don’t feel comfortable bringing her.”
Moline says after COVID-19, she saw hundreds of home-based care centers close, causing even more of a lack of availability in Missoula.
“Home-based programs still outnumber centers,” she says. “And there's a big need for home-based programs because generally, home-based programs are one of the the only programs that offer care for infants and toddlers. Infant and toddler care is very scarce.”
Part of the reason for the scarcity of infant care is because of the ratio — centers don’t have the staff numbers to place one employee per four kids.
Moline is the co-founder of the Montana Family Child Care Network, which provides a network of support and resources to encourage more home-based childcares to open and thrive. The network is under Raise Montana, an organization that supports child care in the state.
Montana Advocates for Children and Zero to Five also have support and resources for childcare providers. Brunner says she appreciates any help from the community.
“Whether it's people in the community there that are in construction that can come help build, you know, shade structures and things on the outside or help with painting and stuff because just the upkeep of the buildings alone can be so hard sometimes financially, and just having those supports that the community would be great,” she says.
Both Moline and Brunner are happy to see developments in the Best Beginnings Scholarship to widen eligibility, as well as real estate support provided by the Missoula Child Care Advantage pilot program.
“There are a lot of people, a lot of providers, out there that want to expand and grow, but it's just not feasible with the cost of renting and or purchasing real estate right now,” Brunner says. “[The Missoula Child Care Advantage] is definitely a step, but there's more that needs to be done for sure.”
