Solving Leelanau’s Child Care Crisis

Early Childhood Development Commission launches innovative home-based business model

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

Rhonda Mack’s job begins at 7:45 a.m., when the first child walks into her home near Lake Leelanau, smiling and ready to play. Over the course of the morning, moms, dads and grandparents from every corner of Leelanau County drop off their babies and toddlers, then depart for work so they can earn money, put food on the table, and do their part to keep the regional economy humming.

Six children at a time frolic in Mack’s busy home; two of them less than 18 months, the others between 2 and 3 years old. On a day in mid-January when I catch up with her, she is watching Penelope, Marshall, Luis, Addison, Wallace, and Eloise. She has a roster of 10 kids, some of whom spend five days a week with her, others only two or three days. Nine more are on her waitlist, including many infants.

“The most gratifying thing is seeing the children smile, play, and learn to be with others in the same space,” said Mack, who worked at the Leelanau Children’s Center in Leland for 19 years and opened her own home-based child care business when the Children’s Center closed its infant and toddler program in June 2021.

“There’s a big need for child care, so I thought, ‘I’ll try to do it at home’. It’s also a cozy atmosphere, which might be more comfortable, more supportive for little ones.”

Mack’s home has two rooms for children to nap and have quiet time, she has play areas both indoors and outdoors, and she is converting her two-car garage into a classroom where the children can engage in developmentally appropriate activities that include explorations and investigations. The last child leaves her house at 5:30 p.m.

“That’s a full day,” Mack said. “But I know there’s also a need in the county for care afterhours.”

For those families lucky enough to be on her roster, Rhonda Mack’s home is an ideal safe and nurturing place to leave their young children during the workday. Many more families are stuck in limbo, unable to find affordable childcare for infants and toddlers. The crisis is particularly acute in rural areas.

 

More home-based childcare needed

Mack’s business on Eagle Highway, near the northeast side of Lake Leelanau, is a model that the Leelanau County Early Childhood Development Commission (LECDC) hopes will inspire at least four or five more home-based childcare businesses to launch during 2022.

This month LECDC kicks off a multipronged campaign to recruit others to set up their own home-based child care facilities. A collaborative effort with the Leelanau Children’s Center and the Leelanau Peninsula Economic Foundation, the initiative will match each new provider with a personal coach and a business coach, provide startup money, and help walk them through the complex world of child care licensing and regulations.

“We’ll have posters everywhere—from gas stations, to pharmacies, to shops—to find those next three or four providers,” said Leelanau County commissioner and LECDC managing director Patricia Soutas-Little. “I’m hoping we have a big turnout.”

The initiative to recruit more child care providers got a boost when LECDC announced in November 2021 that it had received a grant of $318,000 from the private nonprofit Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC) to develop this model and recruit five more Leelanau County residents to establish their own home-based child care business. The grant provides funding to assist new child care providers with licensing, education, facility upgrades, and their basic business needs.

Leelanau was one of five Michigan communities, along with Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Newaygo County, to receive a portion of $1 million in grants from the first round of ECIC’s Child Care Innovation Fund which, as stated in a press release, “was designed to reimagine child care through common-sense financing and business solutions.”

“We know accessible, affordable and high-quality child care is essential to Michigan’s recovery and future economic vitality,” says Joan Blough, director of the Child Care Innovation Fund. “And clearly the need to fund new ideas exists.”

The need for affordable child care is dire—in Leelanau, throughout Michigan, and throughout the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the crisis. According to research from the University of California, Berkeley, there are 110,000 fewer people working in child care now compared with February 2020, just before the coronavirus shut down the economy.

“Leelanau child care options and facilities have been drastically diminishing in the last few years, and this grant will be critical in providing some solutions for our working families,” said Soutas-Little. “Our goal is to establish five new fully-functioning child care facilities over the course of next year so infants and toddlers can receive the benefits of high-quality child care.”

 

Parents with child care work, provide local economic boost

Working conditions for child care programs are too often characterized by low compensation, limited benefits, and few opportunities or incentives to advance, the LECDC reported in its November media release. The grant initiative hopes to solve this problem by filling the financial gap between what it costs to be a child care provider and what families can afford to pay for child care.

“That financial gap is a key reason why home-based providers often don’t make it,” said Soutas-Little. “We’ll cover the startup costs, including standard things like getting fingerprints and permits, and buying toys, books and food for the home.”

If successful, the initiative can enable more parents to return to work, which will provide a boost for Leelanau County businesses desperately in need of employees.

Advocates for investing in child care say that high-quality, early childhood programs can change lives. Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman’s multi-year research study demonstrated that every dollar invested in quality early childhood programs can yield up to a 13% return on investment by increasing school readiness, increasing high school graduation rates and ultimately, decreasing poverty rates. Experts in early child care agree that the benefits of high- quality early care and education are even greater for vulnerable children, and evidence suggests that greater exposure to high-quality early care and education environments improve developmental outcomes for young children.

In September 2021, the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners narrowly averted an effort to defund the early childhood services program which voters approved in a 2019 millage. Lead by William Bunek, the Commission’s four Republicans had pushed to starve the program, before all seven elected officials agreed on an 11^th-hour compromise to continue funding it, albeit at a smaller amount than the millage voters approved two years earlier.

“This is a big deal,” Heidi Kruse, executive director of the Leland-based Leelanau Children’s Center, said of the $318,000 grant from the Early Childhood Investment Corporation. “The success of this pilot will have a huge economic impact on the county. We want to give people the opportunity to go back to work, whether their jobs are in restaurants or our service industry, or at-home jobs.

“A huge percentage of predominantly women are home taking care of their children when they could be working.”

Thinking of home-based child care as a business, not as a babysitting side hustle, is key to this initiative, said Kruse, who will work together with Soutas-Little to screen calls from interested applicants. Providers will have the help of a personal coach who has experience with home-based child care; a business coach who can assist them with accounting, payroll, finding a contractor for home renovations, and encouragement to join the local chamber of commerce; they’ll also receive startup funding that covers the gap between what families can pay for child care and the true cost of providing it in the home.

“You get to run it out of your house, you get to make a good living, you get to work the hours you choose, and you get coaches and startup help along the way,” said Kruse, who added that the Children’s Center, which closed its infant and toddler program last summer, is committed to early experiential education for all young children.

“Even though we can’t do it under our roof, we’ll help with the quality component. Once children are three years old, they could go to a larger center where they continue to learn social and emotional skills with each other.”

Recognizing the acute need for local child care, and also the business opportunity, Rhonda Mack is taking steps to relicense her home near Lake Leelanau so she can care for as many as 12 children per day. Her 22-year-old son, Timmy, currently a student at Northwestern Michigan College, has completed his CPR requirements and is taking state health and safety courses and background checks so she can hire him to help.

Those nine infants and toddlers on Mack’s waiting list may soon come frolic in her home.

To learn more about the Leelanau Early Childhood Development Commission and the opportunity to become a local child care provider, visit LeelanauEarlyChildhood.org.