Local nonprofit plans to establish a child care center in Mt. Pleasant

MT. PLEASANT - A soon-to-be established nonprofit is aiming to address child care shortages in Mt. Pleasant by opening a child care center.

A group of local residents and businesses held discussions at recent chamber planning meetings on how to address the child care needs of the community. The group will be gathering on March 3 to establish a nonprofit and designate board members, who will be tasked with establishing a child care center in the town.

Kristi Ray, executive vice president of Mt. Pleasant Area Chamber Alliance, said the shortage in child care is a regionwide issue that communities across southeast Iowa are facing.

'Four years ago, when I got here, this was one of the biggest issues that we talked about - the need for child care,” she said.

Discussions to form a nonprofit and board came after Tasha Beghtol from DHLW Early Childhood Iowa, a statewide initiative focused on 'improving the quality of life for young children,” approached Ray about working on finding more immediate ways to provide access to child care for parents and children in Henry County.

'The child care world can't do it alone, the business community can't do it alone. [Beghtol is] taking care of the child care side. I'm helping to figure out a location, what will the business community do to support it, helping them to find a public-private partnership, what can everybody bring to the table,” Ray said of the collaboration. Ray anticipates the nonprofit board will be split between health care professionals and individuals from the business community.

While it is difficult to pin down the exact number of child care seat shortages, according to statistics available to the Department of Human Services (DHS), there are currently 348 seats available in Henry County for a total of 1,344 children, ages 0 to 5. Beghtol explained the 348 seats does not include in-home providers who are not connected to the DHS.

'Someone can care for children from their home. If they have five or less, they are a legally operating center and don't have to be connected to DHS. I can only see the registered or licensed providers,” Beghtol said, 'But even with all the in-home providers, we're still not anywhere near the number of slots needed.”

Beghtol added that it is 'highly unusual” for a town the size of Mt. Pleasant to not have at least one licensed center. The town has been without a child care center since 2011 when licensed center Owl's Nest went out of business.

Because of the lack of child care, Beghtol said parents have had to look for options outside of their communities or rely on family-friend-neighbor care.

'What's heartbreaking for me is families are doing whatever they have to do to get by. We need to make child care not only accessible but provide quality options. These providers are teaching our youngest children and preparing them for success in school,” she said.

Beghtol added that failing to address child care is ultimately an economic issue as well.

'Childcare is economic development, it's economic growth. It's a missed opportunity to attract young professionals. When you talk about economic growth and sustainability, you have to include child care,” she said.

Moving forward, the chamber and business community are hoping to provide some immediate relief to parents while continuing to figure out long-term solutions.

'We believed four years ago - and we still do - the best case scenario is to have a private industry run it and manage it. We would be supportive and we were hoping that is what would happen. We wanted to give that time to play out but unfortunately did not [happen],” Ray said, adding that 'financially, child care doesn't make any money, it's a challenge.”

The new facility the nonprofit aims to establish will start small, serving 10 to 15 kids in an existing building.

'It'll give some people some help right now and gives us a couple years to decide whether we are going to work closer with a private entity or if we are going to build our own,” Ray said.

The chamber is currently still in talks with a private entity who may establish a larger facility in the town down the line.

'We've been working for the last two years with a private entity and I'm still not convinced that private entity won't be where we will end up with, we just wanted to figure something out in the meantime,” she added.

Ray also stressed the new center does not intend to 'harm” the in-home providers or other existing services in the area.

'We will still tell people, before they look at ours, whether they've looked at some of the existing facilities. But the child care professionals are convinced it's not going to be a problem, there's enough to go around,” Ray said.

In terms of how quickly the center will be up and running, Ray said it's mostly dependent on how quickly the board can hire a director and staff. At the March 3 meeting, Ray also anticipates the board will decide on a location for the center.

'The bottom line is, if the private entity goes forward, we're talking a year or two. That doesn't help the families right not who are going ‘we need child care.' Our conscience just got to us and we decided we can't put it off any longer, we can't put it off another year,” Ray said.