Report cites Indiana’s lack of child care; some call for more aid for parents
MOORESVILLE, Ind. (WISH) — It doesn’t take long for the kids to get into the story of the day.
As Jen Palmer reads the book “Read to Tiger” by S.J. Vore to a room of more than a dozen 4-year-olds, the children excitedly respond as she asks them how they’d react to the titular tiger’s antics. One even says she’d be “nervous.” Lunch and nap time will soon follow.
It’s hard to find child care service like Palmer’s in Indiana. She is the owner and director of The Growing Garden Learning Center, one of just four state-licensed child care facilities in Morgan County. On Tuesday, 58 children were on the waiting list. By Thursday, she had added five more.
“A lot of (parents) are going outside of Morgan County, outside of Mooresville. Their travel time increases,” she said. “The families that call here are, like, ‘This is our eighth phone call, and you’re the eighth one that said we’re on a waitlist.”
When CNBC’s annual report on the best states for business rated Indiana as the seventh-worst state in which to live and work, the authors specifically cited Indiana’s low availability of child care. Child Care Aware reports there are fewer than 10 licensed child care facilities for every 100,000 Hoosier residents. Palmer said child care centers like hers need to meet certain standards, including health and safety and staff educational training, to get a license.
News 8 talked to six parents whose children attend the center. All of them either receive assistance through the state’s Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) to pay their fees or are just outside the income limit to qualify. They all said it was very difficult for them to find child care they could afford. Mike Catt doesn’t qualify for state assistance. He said his wife is about to go back to work after an extended maternity leave. If she doesn’t find work soon, he said the family will have used up their savings and won’t be able to continue to afford child care. Taylor Yazzie, a single mother of a young son, said she works 40 hours a week plus overtime just to afford child care even with the state’s assistance.
“There were times before I came to Jen that I would be questioning, do I really need this milk, do I really need fruit this week,” she said.
Indiana’s early childhood care system is slowly expanding. Lawmakers this year increased the income limit for CCDF assistance and On My Way Pre-K to 150% of the federal poverty level — roughly $45,000 per year for a family of four. State lawmakers also changed the way Indiana reimburses child care facilities to better reflect their costs. The change came not a moment too soon for Courtney Hoagland. The mother of three was on the brink of pulling her children from The Growing Garden for cost reasons when Palmer called to inform her that, thanks to the funding changes, she would no longer have to pay to send her children there.
“It’s a huge relief,” she said. “At first, my 3-year-old, she wouldn’t talk to nobody. Now, she’s a social butterfly, and they’re getting the resources that we need to get her help.”
Palmer said the investments lawmakers made in early child care this year are a good step toward improving the system but more are needed. She said she still struggles to pay her teachers a living wage. In the meantime, since more than half of her clientele relies on state assistance, she has applied for additional grants to help her keep staff.
“If we’d just pay the workforce that we have, we have qualified educators out there. They’re working elsewhere, making more money,” she said.
Indiana’s budgets run for two years, so lawmakers won’t be able to make any further significant changes to child care funding before spring 2025.