By Rod Bacon
The difficulty working parents have finding reliable child care has been an issue for decades. Various government and private sector programs have attempted to solve the problem to no avail. Now that many employers are requiring employees to return to the office, at least part-time, following the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the social services field are calling it a crisis.
The child care situation in Warren and Washington counties is no different than that in the rest of the country. According to Colleen Maziejka, executive director of the Southern Adirondack Child Care Network, the organization received 274 requests for child care referrals last year. They operate in conjunction with nine day care centers and 14 in-home programs in Warren County. Washington County has no day care centers but does have 35 in-home programs.
The day care centers in Warren County can accommodate 765 children. The in-home programs in both counties combined can care for 608 children.
A problem across the spectrum is finding qualified staff for day care centers because of low pay, long hours, and lack of benefits. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for child care workers in May of 2023 was $14.60 per hour, putting them in the lowest 4 percent of wage earners.
“There is an increased awareness of this problem,” Maziejka said. “Last year we received a workforce retention grant from the state so providers were able to pay themselves and their staff a one-time bonus, but that was short-term. There is no long-term solution at this time.”
According to Abbe Kovacik, executive director of Brightside Up, Inc., a child care resource center that serves Albany, Fulton, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Schenectady, and Saratoga counties, the child care issue is multi-faceted.
“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic it was a challenge for families to find and afford regulated high quality child care in Saratoga County as well as across the state and country,” she said. “The pandemic had a significant impact on child care centers with two-thirds of working parents changing their child care arrangements.”