A new state grant program aims to bring providers online in child care deserts. It's called Child Care Deserts Grants, a new state initiative funded by federal stimulus money. It’s putting $70 million towards getting new providers up and running across the state.
Norah Yates, from the New York State Office of Family and Children Services, says before this program, all their pandemic efforts have been about emergency funding, trying to keep already existing providers open.
Now, they're trying to look forward.
"The Child Care Desert initiative is forward facing, finally, and really looking at building new programs and new providers out there where we desperately need it," Yates said.
It works like this: people who are interested in becoming child care providers can receive help applying and getting licensed, and then money to help cover start-up costs once they open.
Details about the grant program can be found through the OFCS website and local child care resource and referral agencies have staff available to help. Here is a list of New York's CCRRs by county.
Since late January, when the state announced the program, Yates says they’ve received over 1400 application requests. The application portal opens in April and ends in May, so she says if you’re interested in becoming a child care provider, now is the time to do it.
Only one piece of the puzzle
Dede Hill is the policy director for the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, a non-profit focused on low income families in NY. She was cautiously optimistic.
"The desert funding is really exciting. It's a real opportunity for New York," she said. "However, it will only be effective if it is one among many strategies to address the state's child care crisis."
Hill’s concern, which was echoed by her peers, is that child care as a business model was broken before the pandemic, and still is.
"We could find ourselves in a situation where we have new childcare programs that close their doors in six months because the business model doesn't work," Hill said.
She says child care needs to be more affordable for more families. Workers need to be paid a livable wage.
NY budget could change the industry
The good news is, more support for child care in New York may very well be coming. Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed big increases in child care funding in her first executive budget proposal: including expanding subsidies to include more families and providing more infrastructure support for child care providers.
In mid-March, the New York Senate and Assembly released their own budget proposals, which were even more ambitious than Hohul's.
Dede Hill, from the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, called the proposals potentially transformational, "particularly the Senate proposal would drive significant sustained investment to the childcare workforce, and also to childcare subsidies, expanding subsidies to many more families."
She says that kind of policy change and support would go a long way towards making the child care profession more desirable, and financially viable. That is absolutely crucial to getting more providers into the system, say child care advocates and experts.
Rose Blanchard worked as a child care provider for 16 years before joining the the Child Care Coordinating Council of the North Country, the child care resource and referral center for Franklin, Essex and Clinton counties.
She sees the desert funding as a real step forward and a shift in how New York treats child care.
"The exciting parts of this funding is the focus on the importance of child care. It's really promoting a whole program approach to supporting providers. It's not just about getting them licensed, it's about building them up for long-term support and stability," Blanchard said.
Bureaucracy could still get in the way
But Blanchard and other child care advocates say there also a lot of potential challenges with the grant funding.
The program doesn’t provide any start-up funds, only giving providers money after they’re already up and running. That could shut out a lot of potential providers.
Blanchard says it’s also a tight timeline in a licensing process that is notoriously detailed and time consuming.
"You know, testing of paints, radon, water quality, and then there are training requirements," she said. "The timeline for qualifying for these funds is can be difficult for providers, but I know that we are working on supporting a number of them through the process."
She hopes that new providers will be coming into a system they’ll want, and financially capable, of staying in. Advocates say that depends on the state budget, and continued investment into child care as a public good.