With a large gap in child care options in the county, a child care task force hopes a dedicated employee could lead the charge in finding solutions. The task force is working to address issues around child care in the county. According to Child Care Aware of Kansas, the county currently can only fulfill 25 percent of the potential child care slots needed and needs up to 1,400 more child care slots. In the past, they reached out to child care providers to learn what their biggest issues and needs were. Now, to be as effective as possible, the task force said they need to hire someone to focus on meeting the community’s needs full-time. “A lot of what we’re doing is out of our normal 9 to 5 work,” said Dalton Black, director of Harvey County United Way, who is also on the task force. After receiving responses from child care providers from a survey they sent out, Black said they have some ideas of how to make changes to serve them and the community better. Some of the top issues child care providers listed in their survey were food costs, staff retention, paying staff salaries, facility maintenance and training certification. They feel it would be best to have a coordinator in charge. “We’ve followed other communities and what they’re doing,” Black said.
Source: Harvey County Now
