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com | All Editions | November 23, 2020

Child care
Continued from page 4
salaries if they’re going to keep
the service affordable for families.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says
the average wage for child care
workers is $10.72 per hour, and
nearly 15% of them live in house-
holds with an annual income
below the federal poverty line. It’s
no wonder that the industry sees
staff turnover rates as high as 25%
and that there are few if any new
providers willing to step up and
fill gaps left by retiring providers
in their communities.
Affordability
According to the Kansas Needs
Assessment Report, the average
annual cost of full-time care in a
child care center in the state ranges
from $9,430 for preschool-aged
children to $10,955 for infants,
or about 20% of the state medi-
an household income. That cost
drops to about $6,749 for in-home
providers or 13% of the state medi-
an household income.
Single parents of infants and
toddlers in Kansas can expect to
pay 48.7% of their annual income
in child-care costs.
That doesn’t leave a lot leftover
for saving for retirement, paying
down student loan debt, buying
a house or saving for those very
children’s college funds—let alone
providing for a decent standard
of living.
Brook Diel-Keast and her
husband live and work in Med-
icine Lodge, Kansas. She was
a convenience store owner and
manager for seven years and is
now a bank branch manager.
Her husband has worked in the
oilfield and in farming among
other jobs. Like many families,
they watch their finances and
work to plan for the future. But
paying well over $300 to $400
per week for two boys in home
child care slowed down their
financial goals, she said. They
the financial burden.
Working parents feel the finan-
cial sting from missing work in
order to pick up and drop off chil-
dren at day care. Child Care Aware
reports that child care issues lead-
ing to absenteeism and tardiness in
the workforce cost $28.9 billion in
wages each year.
Flexibility in the workplace is
the one constant that many par-
ents cite as helping them manage
their child care needs and their
careers.
Megan Macy now works from
home as a marketing specialist
for Sterilex. She used to be the
director of public relations at the
Kansas Department of Agriculture
and then was a communications
specialist at Kansas State Research
and Extension. When her daugh-
ter, Camille, was born, she had
a 30-minute one-way commute
from her office to Camille’s day
care provider. To meet her pro-
vider’s pickup deadline, she had to
leave work before 5 p.m. She said
having great bosses has helped her
juggle work and family.
“I believe being able to juggle
family right now, and really in
general, is completely depen-
dent on how compassionate and
understanding your boss is,”
she said. Even so, there were
times when she’s had to bring
Camille into work with her
when she was sick or had a doc-
tor’s appointment. It was either
that, she said, or take off a day
or a half day.
Child Care Aware says Macy
isn’t alone. They reported that over
a 6-month period, 45% of parents
are absent from work at least once
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due to child care breakdowns, such
as a provider who is sick or closed
or a child who is sick themselves.
Parents miss an average of 4.3 days
of work, just because of child care
complications.
For rural parents who work
shifts in packing plants or in
other large industrial jobs, the
challenge of a non-standard
workday schedule also creates
problems for child care. Joann
Knight, Dodge City and Ford
County economic development
director, works with the coun-
ty’s two meatpacking plants and
other agricultural and indus-
trial employers. She said it’s not
unusual for couples who both
work shifts to take different
shifts so that one or the other
can stay with their children at
all times. Still, many providers
only offer their services between
7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and requir-
ing strict drop-off and pick-up
times. For a shift worker with
a nonstandard schedule, it’s a
struggle to accommodate child
care, but throw in a sick child
or a provider who has to quar-
antine because of COVID-19
exposure and it becomes down-
right impossible.
Ultimately, though, it’s not just
families who feel the sting. It’s their
rural employers as well.
The bottom line
The child care gap not only
affects families and the develop-
ment of children, but it also hits
businesses’ bottom lines.
In 2019, Child Care Aware
estimated that United States
businesses lost about $4.4 bil-
lion each year due to employee
absenteeism as a result of child
care breakdowns. Often parents
are using up their vacation, per-
sonal time off and sick days in
order to take care of their chil-
dren. The U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports that only 16%
of civilian workers have access
to paid family leave benefits,
and 3 in 10 U.S. mothers return
to work within two months of
their babies’ birth.
The stats are even tougher for
young, low-income mothers with
lower levels of education, who
return to work earlier to pay bills.
The Center for Law and Social
Policy found nearly 80% of work-
ers earning less than $15,000 per
year and half of workers earning
between $15,000 and $34,999 per
year do not receive paid leave.
Many of those are the type of
jobs that keep rural communities
going—gas station clerks, grocery
store workers, restaurant workers
and more.
Rural businesses need mini-
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mum wage employees. Rural com-
munities need professionals to staff
their schools, hospitals and offices.
But recruiting them is more than
just offering them higher wages.
Child Care Aware reported that
54% of employers stated that hav-
ing adequate child care services
reduced missed workdays by as
much as 30% and access to reliable
child care can reduce employee
turnover by 60%. And women
who receive assistance for child
care costs are 40% more likely to
still be in the job two years later.
That bodes well for a business’s
bottom line and the community
as a whole.
Considering what’s at stake, fig-
uring out child-care solutions for
rural working families has to be
part of the infrastructure plans for
economic development. It’s a ques-
tion that needs an answer if rural
communities are going to thrive
now and into the future.
Jennifer M. Latzke can be
reached at 620-227-1807 or jlatz-
ke@hpj.com.
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