State-owned universities providing training for child care workers and employers during time of crisis

Airdate:August 2, 2022

Child care was already unaffordable for 63% of parents. Half of families live in child care deserts. One in 3 working families struggle to find child care. Only 10% of the supply of child care is quality. That’s from a recent article in Forbes Magazine quoting several sources and were from before the COVID Pandemic.

The situation has only gotten more dire as many child care facilities closed and some didn’t re-open.

Quality child care is expensive where it exist, there aren’t enough child care workers and many of them aren’t paid well.

Why does child care cost so much when workers make little?

Knouse and Ocker both said the overhead that includes insurance, food, a physical space all add up.

The Early Childhood Education Professional Development Organization for Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, housed at Shippensburg University provides training for child care workers and employers at little cost.

Liz Knouse, Director of Early Childhood Education Professional Development Organization for PSSHE, Autumn Alleman, Assistant Director of ECEPDO@PSSHE, and Melissa Ocker, Director, Carlisle Early Education Center, Carlisle, were on Tuesday’s Smart Talk.

Knouse indicated finding child care workers has been a major challenger especially since the COVID-19 pandemic began, “We we cannot find qualified staff to work in our classrooms and and who want to to consider early childhood as a profession. We’re competing with the rest of the country and in state for employment. When unemployment is low, early childhood suffers because we have a hard time trying to compete with our local, especially locally, our industries that are hiring everyone.  Our wages are not high, and so it’s a it’s a uphill battle for that. But we also know that childcare is the basis of our economy, and that would certainly shed light on that during the COVID crisis. If you do not have childcare open, people cannot go to work.”

In what is almost unprecedented, The Early Childhood Education Professional Development Organization is offering free classes and degrees in early childhood development. Alleman described degree programs that won’t cost students anything,”this is an incredible opportunity because we have three  varying levels of credential or degree. So we have what’s called a CTA, a child development associate, which is sort of the entry level credential that you need to get into early childhood or that you should have to get into early childhood. And that really is what it is to be an early childhood professional, some child development, very high level, you know, basic level stuff. And then we have also offer an associate’s degree and a bachelor’s degree, and they’re both in early childhood. And we cover the cost of even Gen ed courses. So any student who applies to our program, if they qualify, they can have not only their educational classes paid for, but their Gen.Ed as well.”