Regional Action Plan

Guided by specific research questions, the CACCC collected primary data through the following methods to understand the perspectives of parents, child care staff, and business owners.

Analyzed Publicly Available Data

The CACCC collected and analyzed publicly available data on child care availability, costs, quality, and workforce issues across CACCC counties to establish a baseline, using sources like Great Start to Quality and the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA).

Surveys of Key Stakeholders

The CACCC used its network to gather feedback on child care via online surveys targeting families, child care providers, employers, and municipalities, collecting responses from over 340 community members.

Discussion Groups with Parents and Child Care Businesses

To supplement findings from other data collections, the coalition held discussion groups with parents, caregivers, and child care business owners, gathering nuanced feedback over three sessions.

Access to child care is a worsening crisis in Michigan and the CACCC region, with data highlighting significant challenges for parents, providers, and employers, exacerbated by local factors.

Child Care Is Unaffordable

• Child care is not affordable for the majority of families in the region.
  • In the capital area, 14 percent of a median-income household’s earnings go to child care for a child under two—double the affordable rate (7 percent) (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2016).
• Only 51 percent of eligible families in the region receive the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Child Development and Care (CDC) Program scholarship.
• When a family cannot access or afford child care, their current or prospective employment opportunities may suffer, impacting their economic well-being. Nearly three-quarters of parent and caregiver survey respondents said they experienced job attendance trouble due to child care circumstances.

Care Families Need is Not Available

• After the cost of care, lack of available child care slots is a top barrier to accessing child care in the region. There are 25,765 children younger than five in the region and only 17,999 child care slots available based on provider licensed capacity (LARA n.d.).
• Many child care business owners are unable to staff their child care program sufficiently to the capacity for which they are licensed due to child care staffing issues.
• Many families do not have access to the kind of child care they need, or the type of care they need is not available within a reasonable travel radius.
  • Of families, 28 percent did not have access to care if their child was sick and 21 percent did not have necessary after school care.

Child Care Business Owners Struggle to Recruit and Retain Qualified Staff

• Every county in the region is facing a child care staffing shortage.
  • Of business owner respondents, 77 percent reported experiencing staffing shortages and 35 percent said they could not operate at full capacity because of the shortages.
• Child care business owners are unable to recruit qualified child care staff members due to unsatisfactory wages and benefits, staff burnout, and insufficient funding.
  • Median compensation for child care staff in the region is 22 percent lower than the national median wage ($11.72 vs. $15.01).
• Child care wages are significantly lower than the regional median household income and may even represent a poverty wage for some workers depending on their family size.
  • Child care staff’s median average wage ($33,800) is less than half the regional median household income ($72,173).

Child Care Business Owners Cannot Access the Resources They Need to Thrive and Expand

• Over 45 percent of child care administrator survey respondents said that, given the appropriate resources, they would be willing to consider expanding their licensed capacity at their current location.
• Child care business owners and administrators need additional support to successfully manage or expand their programs.
  • More than three-quarters of respondents strongly agreed or agreed they were concerned about the ability to afford compliance improvements (such as home updates to meet licensing requirements for group home child care).

Municipal Zoning Barriers to Expansion

• Without uniform zoning regulations across municipalities, child care business owners face challenges understanding the varying requirements when operating in multiple locations.

Parents struggle to access affordable, quality care, and child care business owners lack the resources to recruit staff or expand slots, with root causes including market failure, workforce gaps, and limited supply.

• Market failure: The market failure in child care stems from a gap between the market rate and true costs, resulting in low wages for staff and unaffordable care for families.
• Workforce gap: The child care workforce gap is exacerbated by high credentialing costs, low wages, and inadequate benefits, making it difficult to recruit and retain qualified staff. Over 80 percent of responding child care business owners are concerned about recruitment, with many managing waitlists due to staffing shortages.
• Limited supply: The limited supply of child care in the region is due to insufficient licensed spots, regulatory barriers, and inconsistent local zoning ordinances. State regulations and lack of CDC scholarship access restrict providers, while employers’ lack of supportive policies further limits families’ access to care.

The CACCC engaged in a strategic action planning process to develop a regional plan for child care access, including collaborative efforts and implementation planning.

• Action planning process: The CACCC held facilitated action planning sessions where coalition members developed and refined goals and strategies for the CACCC’s regional action plan.
• Regional action plan: The plan focuses on strengthening the child care education pipeline, providing career development, and offering funding and technical assistance, with objectives prioritized and resources estimated based on coalition consensus.
• Alignment with statewide initiatives: The CACCC’s regional action plan aligns with statewide initiatives like the Early Care and Education Registered Apprenticeship program and PreK for All, integrating community-driven goals to support broader early childhood education efforts.

The CACCC has drawn on the aforementioned data to create a regional action plan to improve the state of child care for Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham Counties. The key points of the plan are outlined below.

Pursue State and Local Policy Change

• Engage in and support policy-change efforts to increase access to high-quality early childhood initiatives, specifically with a focus on lower-income families.
• Ease administrative obstacles for existing, new, and expanding child care businesses.
• Inform and support policy-change efforts to create wage and benefits parity among all early childhood educators with their K–12 peers.

Create Business Development Supports

• Develop a resource hub encompassing the dispersed technical assistance (TA) resources available to child care business owners and providers and offer additional educational opportunities when existing TA is insufficient.
• Assess existing regulatory processes and procedures that are barriers to business development to inform and support changes to the regulatory processes.

Strengthen and Expand the Talent Pipeline

• Improve access to early childhood education credentials.
• Publicly promote possible careers in the child care industry to expand the talent pipeline.
• Engage and educate employers about how to best support employee child care needs.

Support and Provide Technical Assistance Within the Child Care Ecosystem

• Build the capacity of regional Resource Centers to act as navigators for all TA needs.
• Strengthen connection and support for child care providers by facilitating relationships among child care providers and between child care providers and families.