By Christine Graf
Residents of Warren and Saratoga County may be eligible to receive funding to help defray the costs of opening registered home-based childcare businesses. Funds have been made available through a $205,000 federal grant that was obtained by a bi-county task force comprised of representatives from Warren County Workforce Development, Saratoga County Workforce Development, the Southern Adirondack Child Care Network, and Brightside Up.
The grant focuses on in-home providers because home-based childcare businesses tend to be more successful in rural areas. Start-up costs for these businesses are also significantly lower than for child care centers.
“Our goal is to open 10 home-based childcare centers in Warren County and 10 in Saratoga County,” said Warren County Director of Workforce Development Liza Ochsendorf.
According to Ochsendorf, many Capital Region communities are so desperately in need of licensed child care providers that they are considered child care deserts.
“Glens Falls is one of the biggest deserts we have, but there are child care deserts all over the two counties and throughout the nation.”
The Center for American Progress defines a child care desert as “any census tract with more than 50 children under the age of 5 that contains either no child care providers or so few options that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots.” An estimated 51 percent of Americans live in child care deserts.
The child care industry was especially hard hit by the COVID pandemic, and approximately 1 in 5 centers went out of business as a result of the pandemic. Others were kept afloat only because the CARES economic stimulus package provided them with emergency funds.
The Century Foundation think tank estimates that over 70,000 daycare providers throughout the country will be in danger of closing when stimulus money dries up at the end of September. If this happens, it could leave more than 3 million children without child care.