It needed a village approach. Our community based solution interprets and knits together both the needs of local child care providers and that of employers. 

Dave Lyons, Strategic Initiatives Consultant, Greater Dubuque Development Corporation

A Community Wide Problem

In 2018, the Greater Dubuque Development Corporation (GDDC) started to see issues of child care emerge in the data from their annual survey of more than 300 local businesses. The GDDC, an organization that supports businesses and economic prosperity by promoting growth and innovation in Dubuque, Iowa, identified two key challenges facing their business partners: finding and recruiting talent and the lack of child care to recruit and then retain that talent.  

In 2019, the GDDC led the formation of a coalition of local entities (including the Dubuque Chamber of Commerce, Child Care Resource and Referral, Dubuque County Early Childcare, and Northeast Iowa Community College) to partner together to solve the community’s child care capacity issue by building, funding, and supporting increased child care capacity and talent, in the industrial park as well as across the community, and advocating for new child care policy.

Data to Drive Decisions

While the first few years were focused on policy and budget planning to support child care providers and families, the group knew the critical impacts of child care supply on the local workforce, the necessity of public-private partnerships, and the power that data would play. In 2022, they set out with two specific efforts: 

1. A survey across business and child care centers to learn more about how child care challenges impact employers’ ability to recruit and retain staff, as well as the challenges child care providers face to meet the needs of local families and employers. From employers, the surveys showed the greatest barriers were: infant care, general availability of child care, cost, child care coverage for shift workers with nontraditional hours (e.g. 3:00 pm to 1:00 am) or for 24/7 operations. From child care providers, the assessment highlighted the desire to offer more infant care and extended hours, but costs and challenges in hiring and employee retention hindered their ability to meet community needs. 

 2. An employee needs assessment specific to each employer was developed to help employers understand the extent of the issue and the types of care needed. This assessment showed that up to 40% of employees had considered leaving their job or cutting hours as a result of not having child care, a data point that illuminated the impact child care benefits have on business productivity and profits. 

Knowing the State Support Systems

At the same time, the state released the Child Care Business Incentive (CCBI) Infrastructure Grant encouraging businesses to build or expand child care capacity, or support arrangements between employers and child care facilities to expand and reserve child care slots. A partner organization, Dubuque Initiatives, identified the Dubuque Community YMCA as the child care provider, received sponsorships from employers, and submitted a grant proposal for a child care center in the industrial park.

Beyond the letter of support, however, business partners were hesitant to get directly involved in child care decisions. In fact, when GDDC first approached businesses to purchase slots at child care centers for their employees, they learned that many businesses did not want to spend their dollars in this way because while it had a high return on investment, they perceived that it required a level of knowledge of child care management that they weren’t comfortable with. Based on these conversations, the GDDC understood the most successful path forward was bringing the businesses together to collaborate on a solution for child care, without one specific business having to bear the full burden. 

A Community Effort to Drive Innovation

The GDDC led the creation of the Dubuque Child Care Collaborative (DCC), a child care consortium committed to creating a collaborative state-of-the-art child care center with the businesses in the Dubuque Industrial Park West. In 2023, leveraging the state funds available from the CCBI, combined with investment from businesses in the industrial park, the group was able to renovate a former call center into Bright Minds, a child care facility with 10 classrooms and 120 child care slots, including 3 infant rooms with space for 36 babies ages 6 weeks to 18 months. 

The opening and running of the Bright Minds child care center and this community-centered approach not only supported the development of much-needed child care capacity in Dubuque, it also raised opportunities for additional innovation and problem solving in implementation. 

Once Bright Minds was in place, the GDDC used the collaborative community model, and needs assessments specific to the local school district, to collaborate on the build out of 10 additional preschool classrooms next to Bright Minds. This allowed school district preschoolers to receive additional hours of care (known as wrap-around care), after their half-day preschool program concluded.  Through a joint-hire program, the preschool teachers can work a full day by teaching preschool in the morning and then transitioning with their students to the wrap-around care in the afternoon. The teachers can also choose to work summers at Bright Minds when the school district is closed. This is a win-win as teachers are provided additional hours, if they want, and the approach provides a system of continuity for teacher and student. 

The Challenge of Developing the Human Infrastructure

The child care collaborative understood infrastructure is a critical component, but child care is all about the people who provide the care. Building a new center would grow capacity, but a new center would need new teachers, and the local child care providers already had difficulties recruiting and retaining staff. Concerns arose that teachers from existing centers would move to the new center, impacting the ability of the other local facilities to remain open. It was imperative that the new center recruited teachers outside the existing Dubuque teachers pool. 

Outcomes

The GDDC saw this as an opportunity to advocate for securing state funds to create a Child Care Wage Enhancement Program for early childhood educators. They also worked with employers to raise funds to support the recruitment, retention, and professional development of new early childhood educators. Local businesses of all sizes and industries made voluntarily contributions ranging from  $5,000-$600,000 to support the sustainability of Bright Minds and the greater child care community through continuation of the Wage Enhancement fund. These funds have, to date, supported the creation of 144 new child care slots and the hiring of 38 new early childhood educators throughout the Dubuque community.  Employers are incentivized to invest in the fund as participating businesses’ employees receive priority enrollment at the Bright Minds facility. 

Nicolas Hockenbury, Director of Workforce Programming at the GDDC, believes that the development of the Bright Minds facility met an immediate child care need, but the collaborative approach has created a road map for future success by involving the entire community to respond to the child care crisis.

Advice

Hockenbury’s #1 piece of advice is to really listen to and understand the nuanced needs across stakeholders in order to uncover the innovative solutions to meet their needs. He admits that their first proposals flopped with employers because they made assumptions about what employers and child care providers needed. He credits the collaborative work across the community and the deep needs assessments and data analyses in Dubuque for guiding them to the solution that, “had the greatest impact across the community at large and is the one that’s least complicated for employers.”