Iowa child care shortage: Are law changes making a difference?

DES MOINES — Roughly 1 in 4 Iowans lives in an area where there are not enough child care providers.

The need is even more pronounced in the state’s rural areas, where roughly 1 in 3 Iowans lives in what experts have termed child care deserts, according to data from the Center for American Progress.

State lawmakers have taken steps in recent years to address access to affordable child care in Iowa, enacting some of the recommendations made by a task force commissioned by Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Lora Patton, a regional director for Iowa Child Care Resource & Referral, a program that supports quality child care throughout the state and helps providers comply with regulations, recently was interviewed by The Gazette to talk about whether those recent changes have helped address the child care issue in Iowa, and what work remains.

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The following interview was edited only for clarity.

Q: The state this year expanded eligibility in the state-funded child care assistance program for low-income Iowans by raising the threshold. Is that a big deal?

A: I think it's a big deal. It hadn't been expanded for a number of years. It went from 145 percent of the federal poverty level to 160, which is a family of four with a household income of $48,000. Which is, you know, that's still a little bit tough to get to. But the other part of that is, then (the new law) also went from you were eligible at 28 hours of work (per week) to now it's 32 hours of work. So the adult has to be working at least 32 hours. And I think I get, with the worker shortage in the state, why that may have been done. But you also run into then employers don't always go over 30 hours, because then sometimes they have to offer benefits. So it makes me wonder about the accessibility of jobs then, when they have to go up over that 30 hours. But again, two sides to that, so I get it. But I think it also can be a barrier.

Q: We hear often that access to affordable child care is keeping some parents, women especially, out of the work force. In other words, parents are calculating that it is too expensive to pay for child care, and are instead staying home. Is that still an issue?

A: I think it is still an issue for some. With that child care assistance, there can still be some copay that is expected by the family. So that can be a barrier for folks getting back to work also. And then child care being accessible. So we still have places across the state where we have what's considered a child care desert, and there's not enough child care slots for the number of children in the area. Obviously in the Des Moines metro, we don't run into that as much, but there are several rural areas that do run into that.

Q: As you said, there are still child care deserts in Iowa, especially in rural areas. What can help resolve that issue?

A: We continue to work to professionalize the work. So child care workers are still underpaid. They did increase the child care assistance rate that is paid to child care programs, which is helpful. But it's still, you have child care workers who are coming into work and in some cases making 10 bucks an hour. So they themselves are in a situation where they can't pay for their child care. And so getting that professional workforce in place, it's still difficult. We were not in the best shape before the pandemic, and then the pandemic certainly didn't help that. So still working on that. But the governor did approve a pilot program to offer child care assistance to employees working in child care programs (to) a pretty wide range of income levels. The last time I heard, there's maybe around 40 people across the state that have applied to do that. That's just been available for probably about a month. And so that may be helpful to getting folks back into programs working with children.

Q: We hear that creating affordable child care requires a delicate balancing act, because it takes financial resources to operate facilities, including salaries for workers, but those costs could be passed along to families. How delicate is that financial balance?

A: The biggest thing is, yes, the center has to have the money to be able to pay their workers more. And a lot of times where that comes from is the families attending the program. There are successful entities where a program may partner with a business, and a business is maybe paying for the facility or paying some of the expenses of the facility. And so then that program can put that tuition back into the rates they're paying their staff. And so that is where communities can come together and help support those child care programs in different ways. And it can look different everywhere: facility costs, maybe just day to day, like snow removal and things like that, that a business would have any way, sharing that with the child care program to take some of those expenses off so they don't have to be passed on to the parents. And then the tuition can be put towards the wages that staff are earning.

Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com