Delyne Hicks still recalls a story from years back when the mother of a pregnant teenage girl came into the James Rushton Early Learning Center in Woodlawn, where Hicks is the executive director, and told her that her daughter had ruined her life.

The mother felt barely able to take care of herself and her teenager. She didn’t know how she could afford a newborn and the price of child care.

“We’ll take care of you and take care of the baby,” Hicks told the soon-to-be grandmother at the time.

When the family returned to James Rushton with their 6-week-old baby, they found that the center would give them tuition assistance, making the cost for care $15 a week.

The support and savings ultimately allowed the young mother to finish high school and enroll in nursing school. She currently is employed full-time at a local Birmingham hospital.

“That’s the story that you come to work for,” Hicks said. “That young woman didn’t ruin her life because what we do makes a difference not just today, but forever and for multiple generations of a family.”

May 12, 2023, is Child Care Provider Appreciation Day. Alabama child care providers and supporters say more state funding will help more parents go to work and more children receive quality care and guidance before first grade. The state currently is in the process of adding funding to train and support more early childhood staff.

A 2021 report by the Bipartisan Policy Center estimated that the state needs 85,000 more child care spots to serve all of the children who need care. The estimated gap in the Birmingham metro area is the largest in the state, accounting for just over 23,000 children.

The importance of quality child care

The impact of quality child care and early education are not only experienced by individual children and families, but also by whole communities and larger economic systems. Child care and early education has been called ‘the invisible driver of the economy,’ allowing more parents, women in particular, to participate in the labor force.

In Alabama, a 2021 report by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that not having enough child care coverage could cost the state between $3 billion and $4.6 billion over the next decade due to lost household incomes, a diminished workforce and lost tax revenues.

The estimated return on investment in early childhood programs is high, ranging from $4 to $13 for every $1 spent due to increased educational attainment and employment, improved health and declining truancy and criminality, according to the Brookings Institute and the University of Pennsylvania.

“Early care and early learning centers are an integral part of a thriving economy,” Hicks said. “If economic growth is going to happen in Alabama, in Jefferson County or Birmingham City, then we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got the infrastructure to support it. And that includes a thriving, well funded, quality education program for families with young children.”

Quality early child care and education programs have been proven to improve the long-term educational outcomes of the children and can mitigate poverty into adulthood.

Since the pandemic, however, child care and early learning providers have struggled. Many families have experienced wait lists and rising costs for care, while providers have had difficulty recruiting and retaining staff members.

The average cost of child care in Alabama is $6,814 a year, up from $6,118 in 2018. Child care staff typically make about $10 an hour, though some make minimum wage.

Childcare Resources – a central Alabama child care agency that helps families connect with free child care and gives training and technical assistance to providers like Hicks – hopes that legislators will celebrate Friday’s National Child Care Provider Day by funding child care and early learning programs at the same level as the state’s pre-K program, which receives about $173 million.

“We’re helping get children ready for pre-K – we have this great number one ranked first class pre-K program in Alabama. Don’t you want the children coming into your program to be well prepared, well supported, well nurtured? Well, that’s child care,” said Joan Wright, executive director of CCR. “And so the legislature needs to keep children first in their decision and fund us at the same level as the Pre-k program. Keep children first and they’ll see a big payoff.”

Hicks says full funding from the legislator would help the 40% of her staff who have to take on second jobs.

“Sometimes you’re working a second job and you come in and you’re a little tired and we want them to be able to be refreshed and joyous,” said Hicks. “And yes, they do really good jobs. But sometimes we all get bogged down in the day and the day to day living and we want to be our best so our children and families can be their best.”

Staff shortages

Tonya Thompson-Wilson, the director of New Beginning Christian Child Development Center in Birmingham, said she is competing against Chick-fil-A and Amazon for employees and often losing out, as they can afford to pay up to $5 an hour more than her facility.

And while she is certified to train workers who don’t have qualifications, it is difficult to even get applicants through the door.

Thompson-Wilson has benefitted from a Child Care Workforce Stabilization grant from the Alabama Department of Human Resources that allows her to give quarterly bonuses of $3,000 to full-time workers and $1,500 to part-time workers.

According to DHR, the agency has awarded 6,935 grants to child care providers since the initiative was announced in November 2021. DHR Commissioner Nancy Buckner has called them an “important piece of the puzzle” in helping child care providers.

However, the grants are set to expire in September. Thompson-Wilson worries losing the incentive will exacerbate her difficulties finding staff.

“It has us in a place now where are the people going to leave us or are they going to stay? Are they going to continue with us or what are we going to do? Are we going to lose them just because we can’t give them that incentive anymore?,” said Thompson-Wilson. “It has child care workers up in the air.”

Thompson-Willson currently has a waitlist of 65 children at New Beginnings. The waitlist for the James Rushton center, where Hicks works, is 120 children.

“It’s just been horrible. We have parents calling on a daily basis saying can I just put my kid’s name on the waiting list,” Thompson-Wilson said.

The Bipartisan Policy Center report found that states who were able to reduce or overcome their gaps did so by expanding infant and rural child care programs, improving child care quality, and expanding the child care workforce via scholarships aimed at building a pipeline of early educators.

“Put more money out there so we can pay our child care workers and educators, so that they may be able to come in daily, and give our kids what they need to build their little brains to make them the next success for our nation and our country,” said Thompson-Wilson.

Thompson-Wilson has worked hard to build a quality early learning center. It not only serves families in her Birmingham community but also her own family. All five of her grandchildren went through her program.

“I absolutely love and adore coming to work every day to see these bright little faces and to pick their brains and build their brains and see what new things they have to offer and what new things that we have to teach them,” she said. “We need our future doctors and our future lawyers and our future judges and our future presidents. And we also need the people who will teach them along the way.”