Despite funding committed to supporting child care providers offering services to essential workers, a large number of providers have, so far, gone without it.
More than 5,400 child care providers — 5,380 with state and 22 with tribal licenses — applied for a piece of the $30 million the state Legislature committed toward grants for licensed child care providers caring for the children of essential workers, according to a news release from the Minnesota Department of Human Services. The first round of funding, which are administered through Child Care Aware, tallied $9.8 million in grants awarded to more than 1,200 child care providers.
The peacetime emergency child care grants start at $4,500 and are awarded monthly. Providers can qualify for additional funding depending on their hours, the number of eligible children they serve and the demographics of the children they serve.
These grants follow others made by Minnesota's Initiative Foundations in early April. The Initiative Foundation headquartered in Little Falls provided 110 grants to Central Minnesota child care providers, which between them support 2,420 children of essential workers, according to information provided by the foundation.
BarbaraLee Malikowski, a child care provider who runs 40 Acres Childcare in Foley, received some funding from the Initiative Foundation. All of the around 10 children she cares for have parents deemed essential workers: police officers, medical personnel, manufacturing workers. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, only one child stopped coming for child care.
"I still have a full house," Malikowski said.
Though the child would be going to kindergarten this fall and Malikowski was expecting the family to no longer need her help with the child's care, it was still difficult, Malikowski said. She has been looking after many of these children since they were babies.
"I wasn't ready emotionally," she said.
The children continue to play as they naturally did before COVID-19, Malikowski said. She said her location, which is a 40-acre farm and a lower level with several rooms, allows them to break into small groups to play as well as room to run outside.
"And if they play together, they play together," she said.
When it comes to cleaning? That's not news to her as a child care provider, she said.
"We're constantly wiping down surfaces with bleach and water," Malikowski said. "We're constantly washing our hands."
Sneeze into your elbow, she tells the children. Wash and flush.
"We've always told the children to do that," she said. "... To us, this is normal."
According to the Department of Human Services, approximately 420,000 children under 12 years old live in a household with a critical essential worker. The state estimates that approximately 270,000 of those children will need care and around 120,000 are likely to use licensed child cares to provide that.
Less than 15% of the child care providers in Central Minnesota who applied for Initiative Foundation grants received them. The Initiative Foundation in Little Falls received over $1.8 million in grant requests from 766 providers. This included requests from more than 170 different providers in Stearns County, around 75 in Benton County and 60 in Sherburne County.
The Initiative Foundation had $150,000 to give out.
Between all six Initiative Foundations, more than $4.2 million in grant funding was requested from 2,795 child care providers. Approximately 1/3 of that funding was supplied to providers across the state.
The six Initiative Foundations were asked by Gov. Tim Walz in March to launch an emergency child care grant program to support licensed child care providers in greater Minnesota. They were asked to commit at least $50,000 apiece.
Each foundation was then gifted $100,000 from the Minnesota Council of Foundations, Initiative Foundation Vice President for Community and Workforce Development Don Hickman said last week.
Hickman said the grants had to be spread across all 14 counties the Initiative Foundation serves, though demand was not equal in every county. He also tried to balance grants between those awarded to centers, which tend to serve more children, and home-based providers, which tend to cost less. In doing so, he said he was attempting to avoid a bias toward centers that would disadvantage low-wage workers.
For every provider that got a grant, "I made her night," he said, noting the applicants were almost entirely women. Those who didn't were crushed.
"It's just a gruesome time for providers right now," Hickman said.
Grant asks made to the Initiative Foundation were capped at $3,000. Hickman said he suspects the grants provided do not cover even one weeks-worth of expenses.
"That's just the door we held open for them," he said.
These numbers did not include a few additional grants made possible by $6,000 in donations.
Sarah Kocher is the business reporter for the St. Cloud Times. Reach her at 320-255-8799 or skocher@stcloudtimes.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahAKocher.
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Grants supply some funding for child care providers, but many still in need - SC Times
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