Childcare: The workforce behind the workforce

You’ve heard (and maybe even experienced) how difficult it is to find accessible and affordable childcare. While this is certainly a problem across the nation, what can be done right here in Montana, or even in Missoula County, to address this vital need?

This week, the commissioners sat down with Grace Decker, educator and coordinator for the Montana Advocates for Children, to discuss the importance of investing in early childhood services and what creative solutions are happening in our community and across the state.

 Links mentioned in this episode:

• Montana Advocates for Children
• Missoula Childcare Advantage
• Zero to Five Missoula
• Hidden Cost of Child Care calculator
• Report | Lost Possibilities: The Impacts of Inadequate Childcare on Montana's Families, Employers and Economy

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Juanita Vero: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Juanita Vero and I'm here with my fellow commissioners Dave Strohmaier and Josh Slotnick. And Josh is running a little late, so he might pop in. But we're joined today by Grace Decker, who wears many hats and currently works as a coordinator of the Montana Advocates for children. So welcome, Grace. Yes.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:30] Welcome, Grace. I think we first met when our kids, my kids went to Missoula Community School way back in the day, and so there's probably been a lot of twists and turns in your career and experience since then. So maybe just talk to us a little bit about your past experience as it relates to just working with kids and how you ended up where you are today.

Grace Decker: [00:00:54] Thank you so much, and I am so glad that you mentioned that I was lucky enough to have your kids when I was working as the director at the Missoula Community School, which was a minute ago. I have worked in early childhood for my entire career, and the reason why really is because of the joy and love of kids, and how fascinating. I've always found that early childhood period of life. And I was lucky enough to work at a school where we really celebrated that joy and building that community, and loved the work that we did. To be honest, the longer that I was there, the more I started to realize that across the community, not every kid had access to that great and joyful and exploratory kind of a start. And I started to realize that what I really wanted to do was work to try to make sure that more and more kids could have access to a great early childhood education. So across the course of the last 20 years, I worked as a coach and a consultant to other child care programs, offering them training and then being there to answer their questions, especially around challenging behavior in young children, which is something that I'm really passionate about Whatever happened, happened.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:58] By the way, this is Commissioner Josh Slotnick who just showed up. He was dropping his kids off at child care, I believe.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:04] Exactly. Sorry to be tardy, but I'm very glad to be here. And thanks for joining us.

Grace Decker: [00:02:09] I'm so glad to be here with all of you. Yeah. And yes, challenging behavior happens all the time. In fact, there are two reasons why people tend to leave the early childhood field. One is because the wages are so low and we'll get to that, but the other is because dealing with challenging behavior is something that a lot of educators haven't had training and preparation for when they work in child care settings or preschool settings. So a lot of people do leave because of challenging behavior. It's a reality. Yeah. So I started to realize that not everybody had a great start. And so I've worked in community building and systems building since then. And after I left my roles coaching and consulting, I was at Child Care Resources. I moved over to 0 to 5 Missoula, where I got to spend five really wonderful years working on, like our child care system and our early learning system across the community.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:53] Is there something unique about investing in early childhood as opposed to investing in free community college or higher teacher wages for high school. Something.

Grace Decker: [00:03:02] Yeah, well, brains are built between birth and five. If you invest, we're out of luck.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:07] Josh.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:09] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:10] But, yeah. Say, say more about brains being that softball.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:13] To you intentionally.

Grace Decker: [00:03:14] Yeah, well, it's a softball, but you would. And you would think it'd be common knowledge, right? But still true.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:19] But yeah, brains are being built.

Grace Decker: [00:03:21] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:21] So what component?

Grace Decker: [00:03:23] Everything. People's capacity for the learning and development that take place over the rest of their life is really built in those first couple of years. And it's babies are born with all of the neurons that they need to develop. But those neurons only make connections to each other based on the experiences that they're exposed to in those early years. So the more enriching experiences, the right kinds of experiences, responsive experiences from adults who aren't stressed out, that's the magic sauce. Responsive back and forth interaction with adults who aren't stressed out. And if young babies, young children get enough of those. They develop all the capacities that they are going to need for literacy, for physical development, and importantly, for communication and for self-regulation. Remember the challenging behavior, right? So if they haven't learned those self-regulation skills by the time they start school, it's much, much, much harder to retrofit those skills later in life. So what happens? Birth to five really matters. And so what we do for kids, birth to five pays off.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:24] What does the data say about the sort of dollar payback from investing in little kids, as opposed to investing in other groups?

Grace Decker: [00:04:31] Yeah, well, we can talk about it in terms of dollars. I do first want to talk about it in terms of human potential, because a person who is able to self-regulate, that's actually a different kind of generational wealth. They grow to be adults who are able to solve problems, to be capable and empathetic individuals who contribute to their communities. They're civically engaged. There are just many, many, many measures. Okay, so let's put that aside because I know you all care about that too. The money economists, they have tried to figure out the dollars, and folks say that anywhere from 7 to $18 is returned to the community for every dollar invested in early childhood. The trick of that, though, is that those are dollars that we don't spend later. Primarily, yes, people tend to make more money, be more creative, be more entrepreneurial, all of those things if they've had a great start. So there are some actual dollars, but it's opportunity costs. And like we don't spend money on things like special education as much. When children get what they need early, we don't spend as much money on the carceral system and on criminal justice, and we don't spend as much money on addiction programs, and we don't spend as much money on health care services because, oh, you want to talk about what happens in early childhood and whether it matters later. Have you heard the news about trauma? Because it turns out that not only those really positive serve and return back and forth positive interactions in early childhood, those result in like developing what you do need. But it turns out that toxic experiences in early childhood result in measurable impacts later in life. So children who have experienced ongoing trauma in their early years are much more likely later in life to have cancer, high blood pressure, to have heart disease, to have diabetes.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:14] Toxic relationships.

Grace Decker: [00:06:15] Yes. And a lot of the kind of behaviors that you would expect too. But people really often expected that, like challenging childhood, challenging adult behaviors, right. Like it's a learned pattern or they're like self-soothing. But what people didn't expect is that that trauma is actually written into the body in the way that the body develops its systems, because being in a heightened state of arousal, so stressed all the time in ways that you can't escape, and no one is there to help you recover from when you're really, really little, that changes your physical body so that later in life, those negative health outcomes are much more likely to be seen in people who had traumatic experiences early on. The study that really unpacked all of this was called the Aces study. It was done in California. A lot of folks have started to get the word about it. Yes, you've got it. Yeah. And so what really surprised folks was not so much the like. This is a ridiculous way to say it, but not so much the drug addiction and the, you know, toxic relationships, but the diabetes and the cancer and the heart disease. Right.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:15] Why do you think it is? I've got some hunches, but why it is so much easier for many folks to embrace investing in, in those way downstream effects, like the criminal justice system, than early childhood investments that clearly pay dividends.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:34] Magically, the mother is going to know exactly how to do this.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:38] Yeah. I mean, and I.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:39] Guess secondly, along those lines, have you have you found any any particularly compelling ways to make the case?

Grace Decker: [00:07:46] Yeah. Well, one thing that I'll say is that the United States is an outlier in this regard, most of our peer nations spend many multiples as much on children between the ages of birth and three as we do so. Most of our peer, wealthy nations around the world are spending anywhere from 11 to $21,000 per year per child between the ages of birth and three, and that's on things like paid family leave. It's on things like universal access for low cost to child care services, universal access to pre-K, pre-K services, as well as all kinds of other investments in like playgrounds and parks that are designed well for young children, and public transportation services that work well for young children and the people who are caring for them. So anybody want to make a guess how much the United States spends per child birth? Again, anywhere from like 11,000 to like $21,000 in our peer nation. So how much do you think we spend?

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:40] Thousand, 6000, 2000.

Grace Decker: [00:08:44] You're all way high.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:46] Whoa, man.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:47] Holy smokes. Zero.

Grace Decker: [00:08:49] But approximately $500.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:51] Oh, my gosh, this is painful.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:52] It's embarrassing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:53] So, Grace.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:53] The countries that you're describing that really put a substantial investment into 0 to 5, do they correspondingly spend less in terms of human development as people are older because they made this investment early, then they don't need to spend so much money on incarceration and diabetes treatment and addiction treatment, etc.. You know.

Grace Decker: [00:09:11] Often when when folks are doing sort of nation to nation comparisons, they might not necessarily unpack that specific question. But when you look at the happiest countries in the world, the countries that are spending in those ways show up on that list, like Finland, like the Scandinavian countries, Bhutan. Yes, yes. In terms of like national happiness, gross national happiness, those are the countries that are outpacing us. If it's as if it were a competitive thing, right? But yeah, so the countries that are spending more on early childhood have those outcomes. They also typically have much more egalitarian situations in terms of women in the C-suite, for example, women in government, for example. Yeah, there's a reason for that, right? Because the United States has such a fragile social safety net that our social safety net is women. Yeah. In fact, a book that I had read over the past summer was called Holding It Together. It's by Jessica Calarco. She interviewed 4000 families and spent hundreds and hundreds of hours talking to families about their situations and about sort of who keeps all the pieces together. And her conclusion is that America runs on women.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:15] I heard an.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:15] Interesting thing the other day. It was, if you're an aging person like Juan, not like me and Dave fear being in some soulless, toxic, carpeted, fluorescent lit assisted living like this.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:28] Oh, it's like this very room that we're in today. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:31] What's the number one thing you can do to prevent finding yourself in such a situation is have a daughter.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:36] Oh.

Grace Decker: [00:10:38] Oh. Gut punch. Honestly, that's that's the thing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:40] When you said women hold it together. Absolutely.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:42] That's that's the deal.

Grace Decker: [00:10:43] And, you know, women hold it together in the early years, too, because even though today two thirds of children have all available adults in their lives who are in the workforce. The situation is that most children have all adults in their home life. Their family are working in some way. And yet when childcare is hard to find or too expensive for a family to access, easily the resolution of that not every single time, but the vast majority of the time, is that the woman in that partnership alters her career aspirations and alters her work situation, so that family safety net is protected in some way. And many women did that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:24] It's kind of a hidden tax.

Grace Decker: [00:11:25] It is a hidden tax. And there's been some really fascinating research on this from the center for American Progress. There's a depressing calculator. We could include the link to it in the materials for this podcast, but the depressing calculator will let you know the lost income over your lifespan from taking even a single year out of the workforce to care for children. And I wonder.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:46] How it goes for caring for. I don't have children, but I have aging parents.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:50] Yes, I'm wondering later. Unless.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:52] Unless you were. Yeah. You had old parents early. I don't know. I guess that's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:55] Yeah, that would be me. That would be. Yeah.

Grace Decker: [00:11:57] I think part of the challenge is that it does happen early. Yeah. Because people.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:01] Have. And then your.

Juanita Vero: [00:12:02] Your your career is stunted, right.

Grace Decker: [00:12:05] Yeah. Not only is your career maybe held because you've missed out on those training and promotion opportunities, but your opportunity to invest in your retirement at that particularly critical starting out stage is also really restricted by that. And so I'll often share this calculator with folks to say, you know, women are holding it together right now, but that is an invisible cost that families are paying because of the way our system works. The family individually is paying a cost later for having made that choice.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:34] Yeah, I was.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:34] Calling it a hidden tax because tax money is typically used for things that help the greater good, and having stable families and healthy children and high functioning adults certainly helps the greater good. And if a person is able to take the time out of work to make sure their kids are smart and stable and well adjusted and kind and good, then we all benefit. So it is a tax, but it's a tax only born, as you're saying, mostly by women.

Grace Decker: [00:12:57] Yeah. And it's a tax that we don't really recognize as a social responsibility in the same way that we recognize, say, responsibility to children after the age of five, after the age of five. We guarantee to every child in Montana that there will be a safe and enriching place where they will spend their days 180 days a year for like six hours a day, at no cost, at the point of service to the parent before that time. Families are essentially completely on their own. There are federal programs to try to make care a little more affordable for families, but those have historically been really hard to access. The qualification for that is far below the level of many families who they make too much money to qualify. But child care takes an enormous whack out of what their monthly budget looks like. In fact, for most families, child care, especially if you have more than one child, is your largest expense even larger than your mortgage or your rent in many cases.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:49] So I've heard child care referred to as a failed market economy. Absolutely. What do you think is meant by that?

Grace Decker: [00:13:55] It means that the consumer, if you will, the family cannot afford to pay the cost of what the service costs to create.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:02] And how about the workers in the situation? How well are they paid?

Grace Decker: [00:14:05] They remember when I said that there were two reasons why people leave the field, right? One of them was the challenging behavior. And that's real. But the major reason is the wages. Wages in child care are still hovering in Montana between 1150 and about 1450 an hour.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:21] So it costs way too much for the consumer. And the workers don't get paid very well. So correct. The market economy here isn't working. I heard someone in Congress, I can't remember who it was, but it was a Republican. Say his mind was changed on child care when he started thinking about it like commodity agriculture. So if we want to have cheap bread and pasta, we have to subsidize wheat. So it works.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:43] Right?

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:44] Farmers stay afloat, at least. Just barely. But it works. And we have some of the cheapest food in the whole world. So if we start thinking about childcare in the same.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:51] Way the quality of the wheat, how.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:53] Do you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:53] So that's a different you're mixing the metaphors. Sorry. Okay. So if you if you use the same paradigm in childcare and said, okay, we're going to federally subsidized child care and then the consumer doesn't pay so much like you don't pay so much when you buy bread, and the producer actually earns enough to live. The folks who are who are workers now get paid 20 bucks an hour. So it becomes a market economy that meets the needs of both the producer and the consumer. Putting quality aside, which is exactly what we've done with commodity agriculture, it's why milk and bread and sugar are cheap.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:25] Sure. Yeah.

Grace Decker: [00:15:26] I think that's a really interesting and good way to look at it. I do want to emphasize the quality piece, though, in that right now, what the only place where people can really strip away is in that quality component. And I think we all would agree that there is such a thing as child care that is of low enough quality that none of us would choose it for our own children. And so what that virtuous cycle of treating it as a, as an important commodity would look like has to pay attention to the quality piece, because part of what makes child care so different from other businesses is that it's not simply possible to produce more of said product in order to sell more of it. That really doesn't work. There's not a way to scale that maintains the quality for what's going on for kids.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:16:06] And it's and it's worth adding that when we are looking at folks who are caring for some of our most vulnerable family members, it's on both ends of the age spectrum. So think about my own mother, who spent time in a memory care facility and seeing the folks who were tending to her needs also seriously underpaid.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:27] So sure.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:28] And I didn't mean to applaud our food system in terms of quality. There's dissertations of information that could be described about the hidden costs there, and I want to be sure and acknowledge that I'm just talking about consumers paying less and producers getting paid more. And this only happens because of an injection of subsidy. Maybe a similar model could happen in child care, but hopefully with better results in terms of quality. So what do you think?

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:50] Moore.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:50] Yeah, Montana advocates for children in this initiative. What is that? Yeah.

Grace Decker: [00:16:54] Well, Montana Advocates for children is a coalition of 11 statewide organizations who are all interested in building a better child care system. And some of the organizations who are part of Mac are early childhood organizations, organizations like the Head Start Association and 0 to 5 Montana and the Family Child Care Network and the Montana Association for the Education of Children. Those are all early childhood players, and some are folks who are working more in the kind of economic justice space folks like Montana Women Vote and the Montana Budget and Policy Center. That's actually where Mac is fiscally anchored as well. And all of those organizations together are really concerned with trying to build a better funded and better coordinated early care and education system that any Montana family can access who wants it. So we have outlined some policy priorities, some levers at the state legislature that could make a difference. But the long term goal really is to build a system that has a sustainable funding source to do exactly what you're talking about, Josh, to bring resources into the system that weren't there before. That's another way to say subsidize. Right. So bring resources in. We can talk to you about some cool examples of communities bringing resources in.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:01] And what are some of the ways.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:02] What are some of those levers that could be pulled at the legislature?

Grace Decker: [00:18:05] Well, let's talk about the legislature first. So one of them is that last year in 2023, the legislature for the first time made a state investment in the child care scholarship program beyond what is required, the very bare minimum that's required by the feds. So most of the money that goes into the child care subsidy, that families use low income families to access and pay for childcare, most of that money is federal dollars coming into the state and then deployed by the Department of Public Health, the state legislature is required to have some amount of state match, and most states were an outlier in Montana. Most states have committed additional resources alongside that required match for many years. Montana has not. And for the first time, it did. In order to expand the set of families who would be eligible for the scholarship. So that's really a step on the right road, and we want to continue to push to see that happen up to the federal Max. The federal Max would be up to 250% of federal poverty, families making up to $68,000. A three person family would be able to access some help with their child care costs.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:05] What would that help look like?

Grace Decker: [00:19:06] That help would look like capping their family copay. Currently, the federal required cap is 8% of their income, and then in a couple of years, that drops down to 7% so that family would be required to pay no more than 7% on child care, family making 68,000 of a family of three. Right now we are at 180% of poverty, so a family would have to make significantly less than 68,000 in order to qualify. So we want to continue to push that envelope wider and wider, because it's really one of the best tools that we have to make child care affordable. The other piece that we really want to push for is to make sure that people who work in childcare are able to access the best beginning scholarship for their own kids, because right now, folks who work in childcare, well, I mentioned the low wages and I mentioned the challenging behavior. The other thing that happens is that when folks have their own kids, they then have to pay for childcare themselves in order to continue to do that work. And maybe they have a partner whose income puts them over the limit, and they have to make that choice. Do I keep doing work that I really enjoy, even though my entire paycheck goes to pay for the childcare? That's in the same program where I'm working. So other states have begun to explore categorical eligibility for the childcare scholarship for people who work in childcare. And we think it would be a really great attractant for folks into a field that is severely understaffed. Right now, turnover in childcare is upwards of 75% of staff, typically across the field means.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:30] Over a year in a time frame. Wow.

Grace Decker: [00:20:32] In a year. And that means that people aren't building expertise. They have no mentors. They have no guides to look to who have expertise in the field, so that categorical eligibility would actually be a really significant lever for a fairly small cost, because we're only talking about a couple thousand childcare workers in the state. So we think that would be a really interesting way to explore that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:51] We've been talking a little bit about state government. Is there work from a policy perspective that is currently afoot or that needs to happen at the federal level to oh, and then eventually let's come back here.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:05] At the local level too, right?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:06] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:07] Absolutely.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:08] This doesn't feel like a local issue or a state issue. It's the whole darn country.

Grace Decker: [00:21:12] Well, it's impacting the whole country. But the reality is that we can't wait for a big, giant, massive new federal program in order to start making improvements where we can in our system. And so that's why it's really important that we pay attention to any state levers that exist and really creative local solutions. And I want to talk about that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:31] Let's just let's talk about that then.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:33] Yeah, absolutely.

Grace Decker: [00:21:34] So there have been a couple of really great examples over the past few years of projects at the local level across the state of Montana, for example, in Baker in Fallon County, a group of folks came together to try to convince all the residents of Fallon County that child care was what they needed to do, and the residents of Fallon County put child care on the ballot as a bond initiative.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:55] And for folks who.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:55] Don't know, this is southeast Montana.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:57] Yes. Yeah.

Grace Decker: [00:21:58] It didn't pass.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:00] Okay. Did it come close?

Juanita Vero: [00:22:01] Yeah.

Grace Decker: [00:22:02] It was not super close. But the thing is.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:06] It was just it was a horrible.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:08] Failure.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:08] Actually.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:09] But this was just the first run at it.

Grace Decker: [00:22:10] This was the first run at it. It's time.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:12] To educate folks and thank.

Grace Decker: [00:22:14] You. Yes. The fact of the matter is that in order to get a bond measure on the ballot at all required signatures from a significant number of people across that county. And those folks have not dropped the issue of child care. They're continuing to explore it, continuing to work on it. Child care was not on the radar as a county wide issue five years ago, so that's actually a really huge win to get the conversation elevated to that level. And sometimes I think we are too quick to look for those quick wins where we went all the way. Insert sports metaphor here. Yeah. Um.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:45] Well said. Yeah. Um, is this emblematic of.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:49] Well, oftentimes we hear about and legitimately so an urban rural divide in the state of Montana and throughout America, for that matter, is is what you saw play out in Fallon County similar to what you might suspect elsewhere in the state of Montana? Or is is the challenge with getting something like that over the finish line equally difficult in urban areas?

Grace Decker: [00:23:11] It's a great question, and I think this is one of those pieces where engaging stakeholders like who didn't used to think about child care, is such an important part of the equation. I'll tell you about a different example from rural Montana in Dutton. The school district in Dutton was struggling to staff up with teachers with its own workforce. And like a lot of small communities, housing is a challenge and childcare was a huge challenge How could you find teachers to work in the school when their own kids had nowhere to go and spend the day? Well, the town of Dutton opened a child care in its own school building in order to provide child care for its own staff.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:46] So teachers bring kids to school, the teachers.

Grace Decker: [00:23:48] Bring their kids right to school with them. They're being cared for right down the hallway. De Smet School, right out by the airport here in Missoula, as I think you all know, is working on a sort of mixed housing development right adjacent to their school and building a child care purpose built on that space has been part of his plan since the get go. So that's a pretty exciting opportunity right here in Missoula that he's pursuing. And then there's child care advantage, which you know, I want to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. So child care advantage is a Missoula born solution right. It was born right here in Missoula to try to bring sectors together who weren't paying attention to child care before. Very much so. Child Care Advantage is a network of independent child care businesses. Those businesses are networked together by shared services, which reduce their operating costs and also bring them more income because one of the shared services is a waitlist that keeps them full 100% of the time, which is actually really important in a childcare small business to be full 100% of the time. So these six networked small businesses are co-located in renovated classrooms at Cold Springs School. And in order to make all of that work, the folks who came together also identified businesses who wanted to be members. So local companies in the Missoula area, Clearwater Credit Union, and Partners in Home Care became members in the network. Their employees find childcare faster by looking for it in the network. The waitlist advantages their employees. So you think about all of the different partners that I just rattled off in that, like 45 second description. We're talking about the school district at the table. We're talking about independent corporations in our community who are at the table. We're talking about the nonprofit community, because this was really incubated by United Way and 0 to 5 Missoula while I was working there. We're talking about independent childcare businesses being at the table and part of that process, they're not usually connected to any network like this.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:36] Missoula County helped fund this.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:37] Project.

Grace Decker: [00:25:38] And that's the big finale. Missoula County and the city of Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:42] Actually know what.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:45] County is that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:46] City in?

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:46] I don't know if we had incorporated.

Grace Decker: [00:25:48] So the city and county each were able to add a relatively small but significant investment in the coordination of this project in their budgets, which helps this project be sustainable. The goal, then, is to expand that network outward to more and more independent child care businesses, so that more and more companies can join. Now, they're not going to literally be co-located at Cold Springs. This is a virtual network of the back office shared services.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:13] So how does this model address the two economic problems we identified before? One cost too much for consumers. And producers don't get paid enough. How does this model address those two things?

Grace Decker: [00:26:23] So what this model does is that it brings those independent child care businesses more income without having to charge the parents who are paying tuition more. How so? Because they are saving time and money, and they are making more income by staying full 100% of the time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:39] And they share back office.

Grace Decker: [00:26:41] Yeah, the back office. Not even personnel, but virtual services mostly. Yeah. Back office functions. So the major functions that they share are payroll services on the back end. They have access to telehealth services for their staff. And then the piece that makes them the most money is the waitlist. So right now if you're looking for childcare as a parent, you have to yourself call umpteen, umpteen different providers and be told no and be put on their waitlist. So you might literally, as a parent, be on a waitlist for like 20 childcare facilities. Some of those facilities might even charge you a fee in order to be on the waitlist. Now, looking at it from the other side, if you're a provider at the end of your long day, you've worked for 8 or 10 or 12 hours with children. Remember the challenging behaviors. You've done that all day, and now you're looking at your phone and you've got umpteen, umpteen phone calls that you need to return and say, no, I'm sorry. Do you want to get on our waitlist? No. I'm sorry. Do you want to get on our waitlist? So our waitlist process is sort of like Match.com for childcare.

Grace Decker: [00:27:37] Right. So folks are swiping one way or the other and and a likely match pops up and then provider and parent together, figure out if it's a mutually agreeable match. But all of that time for both of those folks is like cut out of the equation. Now, in the first model where the provider is like having to make all those calls and put people on the waitlist, when someone they are caring for tells them, hey, Johnny's last day is going to be next Friday, we're moving to Delaware. Now the provider has to go back through that whole waitlist and try to find someone who's a good match for that spot. Those folks have either found care somewhere else. They've moved to Alaska. The kids now three, and is no longer a good fit for an infant, spot all of these things. So that spot might. Even though we're in a shortage situation, that spot might sit open for weeks until that person is ready to come in and be a paying customer.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:25] Like such a good job for technology.

Grace Decker: [00:28:27] This is a technology solution, right? There's no person sitting there fielding the calls. That's what's so cool about it. And it actually does save. It saves the parent a ton of time. It saves the provider a ton of time. And because they will probably find a match before that child even has their last day, they don't lose a day of income. And we're talking about child care businesses that are serving six children.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:49] Maybe. So if ten.

Grace Decker: [00:28:50] Children.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:50] One kid, one day is a big.

Grace Decker: [00:28:52] Deal, one kid one day, especially one kid one week or one month, now that's a significant percentage of of their go round.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:58] So is there savings on on lease or rental because of this sort of shared real estate?

Grace Decker: [00:29:04] Yes. In the in the pilot. So the location at Cold Springs is a pilot for the network. And the providers who are there also have a very reasonable rent situation because of the partnership of the district. We would love to find other buildings owned by school districts, owned by county government, city government, and some other sorts of supports for renovating those. We had a state grant during the Arpa dollars days in order to renovate the classrooms at Cold Springs. But if a classroom were ready to go, it could become a child care advantage site. Child Care advantage would help identify a provider to move in, and then that provider would roll with the waitlist. But the thing is, the network is really intended to serve providers who are not in a co-located location. I guess.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:46] That that was my.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:29:47] Question. This this sounds it sounds great. If you are a child care provider or prospective provider in central Missoula, but what about an outlying area like Seeley Lake? Yeah. You're not going to haul your kids all the way back. Probably not all the way into Central Missoula. Oh people do. Well, they they might, but that's certainly not desirable. Do you know.

Grace Decker: [00:30:07] How many licensed child care spots there are in Seeley Lake? One.

Juanita Vero: [00:30:10] Not even one.

Grace Decker: [00:30:12] Facility. So six slots for children.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:14] So.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:30:15] So I guess talk to us about the opportunity for something like what we're talking about here, providing back office support for providers in outlying areas.

Grace Decker: [00:30:25] Yeah, that's what's really exciting, I think, is that we are interested in being able to bring, I say we I worked for this project for many years now, and so although I'm not there anymore, I still am calling it we. That's great. Yeah. It's great. It's still we we would love to see providers from Seeley, from Alberton, from Frenchtown, from all over come into the network because those small in-home providers are the ones who could benefit most from these back office services, and also from staying full 100% of the time. Right. So the larger a center is, the easier they're able to absorb that loss in income for a little while. And they're also more likely to serve that wider age range.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:06] Is this ready to be scaled up yet or when when do you think this could happen? Because yeah, looking at like Lolo or Frenchtown. Yeah. Could they participate?

Grace Decker: [00:31:15] The goal is to open the network more broadly to other providers around the turn of the year, and be bringing in other companies at that point as well, so that we have more business members whose employees get that faster access, and then we have more child care organizations in the network. I will also say that we're really excited because a really dynamic, professional, early childhood professional in Hamilton is really interested in establishing a rival child care advantage in Ravalli. And we've been really excited since the beginning about the idea of both expansion all across Missoula County, but also the ability to replicate this model in other places.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:50] Ravalli County is the county to the south of us.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:52] Thank you. Thank you.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:54] Can can we go back? I don't know if this is this is part of this podcast one way or the other, but talk about behavior and your coaching days and what's changed. What's missing? What do we need now? How do we tackle this? Because this is this is an issue. What advice do you have?

Grace Decker: [00:32:09] Wow. That is a really great question. One of the things that was most challenging for me when I was a center director, which I was for about eight years, was this question of how to support teachers who were dealing with a child, whose behavior was was challenging for a variety of reasons, right? It's scary. It's frustrating. It pushes all of your buttons. And most people who work in childcare settings not all, obviously, but most are like young women. It's a job you can get with a high school degree. A lot of folks who have always been great with kids, like kids love me kind of thing, want to move into childcare. And then you encounter like, that kid, right? Like the first time that you encounter that kid who all of your charm and your charisma and your everything, it's not working. And this kid really causes you to question whether this work is right for you at all. The people who find themselves in that situation desperately need mentors. They desperately need tools and strategies and knowledge. And as I moved into like a coaching and consulting role, I started to work as a coach in a framework of preventing challenging behavior. It turns out there actually are some really amazing experts across the country who have figured out, like the keys, the toolkit. They call it a pyramid model because there are three layers to it. Actually, there are four. The first is the very base, which is like a well supported workforce. Right. So you've got to have a. Remember I mentioned first that it's those interactions with adults who aren't stressed.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:38] Right. Are there any of those.

Grace Decker: [00:33:39] Well, it turns out the Surgeon general just recently came out with a report that said that parental stress is a national crisis. Wow. Oh, so it is true. We have built a system in which parents are deeply stressed, and young people are choosing not to have kids because they can see what's over that horizon for them. And so parental stress is actually a huge problem. And folks working in child care facilities who are stressed is a huge problem. That's not a great environment for kids when the adults around them are stressed, because the next little piece of that pyramid of skills is around building relationships with children. That sounds like a no brainer, but what about building a relationship with that child?

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:18] Right.

Grace Decker: [00:34:18] What do you do? It turns out there are lots of things that you can do on purpose every day with intention to build relationships with challenging children. And if you're working with children, birth to five. Relationships and care are not like a side effect. They're the core. That's what you have to pay attention to. First is those pieces. Also, how do you set up the environment? There are lots and lots of environmental strategies, like how do you set up your classroom, your space, your child care environment? How do you set it up to prevent challenges? This is one of my favorite things as a coach actually, was to go into an environment and kind of like, look around and be like, huh? I bet you get a lot of children wrestling right over there. And they would be like, yeah, why? And I'd be like, well, you see how that carpet is running all the way along the room? And it's ending at that cute pile of pillows. That's what we call a runway. And if you are 2.5ft high, that is an invitation. You cannot refuse to run and leap into that space. And there are things you can do with your room layout that prevent that behavior from ever happening in the first place. Because the way the room is set up is the first teacher. It tells us what's expected, and it tells the child what's expected of them. So there are a lot of strategies around setting up your room to get more of the behaviors.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:33] That you want. We need.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:35:34] To remove the pile of pillows at the end.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:36] Of this conference.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:35:37] Room here.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:38] I keep diving into the corner.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:35:41] Grace, if someone's listening and is fired up about how they could help the work of Montana advocates for children, or just get more engaged in childcare issues in general, what should they do?

Grace Decker: [00:35:53] So two things that they could do. One, if they're interested in sharing their story about how challenging the childcare environment is as a family right now or as a provider, I would love for them to come to our website at MT advocates for children. Org and sign up to become Montana Advocate for children. They will get from us an email once a week with just some nuggets and tidbits and resources and links. And then as we roll toward the legislative session or have other opportunities to really try to push on some of those policy levers, that's when we'll be asking people to share their stories, share their voice, because it's those stories that make a huge difference to folks who have the ability to shape change. So I would encourage them to come to our website if they're interested in finding out more about local solutions, particularly here in Missoula County. I would encourage them to reach out to the coordinator for 0 to 5 Missoula, the newly hired coordinator there who's at United Way, and also to Childcare Advantage and its coordinator, Sally Henkel.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:48] Is there an.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:49] Effect on business when businesses need to attract workers and workers struggle with getting childcare?

Grace Decker: [00:36:54] I'm so glad that you asked me that question. Childcare is essentially the workforce behind the workforce, so unless you have a robust childcare system that families who need it can access, what ends up happening is that local businesses suffer because folks can't show up to work. I mentioned that women often alter their own work aspirations and stay home with kids when there's not adequate childcare available. Turns out there's a huge economic loss not only to that family, but also to our communities and to our state when that happens. A couple years ago, the Bureau of Business and Economic Research put out a phenomenal report called Lost Opportunities The Economic Impact of Inadequate Childcare in Montana. And it's to the tune of millions and millions and millions of dollars lost to our tax base because folks are staying home instead of being in the workforce. Now, everyone should have the choice, but right now, people don't.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:45] All right.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:46] Grace, per our tradition, and before we close, we always like to ask our guests if you have a good book you've read recently, a nugget of wisdom that you'd like to share with our listeners.

Grace Decker: [00:38:00] Yeah. Well, I think that I might have mentioned it before, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you a little more about it. Again, it's a book called Holding It Together. I am just a real fan of this book, because I think it pulls together a lot of the parts and pieces of our broken not only childcare system, but really social safety net Overall, it's by Jessica Calarco, I think is how you pronounce her last name. It's called holding it together, and it is about the way that women hold together our social safety net because we have disintegrated it so much as a society. So when you talk about elder care or child care, or actually she goes into many of the other parts and pieces of holding communities together, women are doing that unpaid and often unrecognized work, and they're doing it in ways that end up having impacts on their own health, and certainly on their own economic security and their own futures.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:49] Thanks for that. Wow.

Juanita Vero: [00:38:50] Yeah. Thank you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:51] So much. So kind of a depressing nugget. No, no, that's thanks.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:55] Just for the conversation, but for everything you are doing and have done.

Grace Decker: [00:38:59] Oh, it's it's so. My pleasure. You know, I'm still as passionate about the early years as I've ever been. And I think we have so many folks like yourselves who see that and are working on creative solutions. So it's a it's a really positive time.

Juanita Vero: [00:39:14] Montana is so lucky to have you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:39:15] Oh. Thanks, Grace. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Josh Slotnick: [00:39:17] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:39:25] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:39:31] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division. If you have.

Josh Slotnick: [00:39:44] A question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:39:51] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.co/countyupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:39:58] Thanks for listening.