The shortage of affordable child care options in the greater Richmond area — and statewide — is an ongoing problem that experts and advocates want employers to help address.
As of May 4, there were about 12,000 children statewide on a waitlist to receive subsidized child care through one popular program — with more than one-quarter of them in Central Virginia.
Carter T. Whitelow, vice president of government relations with the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, said there’s a business case to be made for employers providing subsidized child care: Employees who don’t have to worry about quality child care will be happier — and more productive.
“There is a dollars-and-cents argument there that businesses are starting to understand,” Whitelow said. “I think that slowly but surely, we’re seeing businesses buy in and see the business case for this, but it’s going to be a process.”
Lakita Goodwin, human resources manager at Perdue Foods in Prince George County, is beginning to explore how to help assist her employees with child care. Purdue employs about 500 people in the region.
Goodwin said she’s been hearing from employees who have resorted to leaving their children with neighbors or family members because they don’t have affordable options for quality child care — a stress that has ultimately led to some dropping out of the workforce to care for their children themselves.
“A lot of people are just staying home to provide their own child care — going without — because they can't afford to have child care or they don't have access to child care,” Goodwin said.
She said Perdue is looking to partner with other businesses willing to share in a joint effort to subsidize child care costs for employees — with quality child care out of reach for families making $30,000 or $40,000 each year.
“I just recently met some business partners who are interested,” Goodwin said. “We're coming up with meetings and times where we can sit down and have these conversations.”
She said at the next meeting, she’s going to be asking about next steps.
“We need to start checking off boxes,” Goodwin said. “If we don’t, we’ll never get started.”
Whitelow and Goodwin joined lawmakers and regional business leaders for a recent discussion about the topic at Brightpoint Community College; another similar event, called “Child Care: Everybody’s Business,” is planned for June 13.
Some employers, like regional health care provider Bon Secours, already offer subsidized, on-site child care to their employees — an effort that began in the late 1980s.
Samara Musselman, administrative director for the company’s child care centers in Greater Richmond, told VPM News that the CEO at the time, Chris Carney, was hearing from nurses struggling to find child care that worked with their schedules.
Musselman said Carney had a child care center on the St. Mary’s hospital campus designed in a way that could easily be transitioned to a medical practice if the demand wasn’t there to support the child care center’s continued existence.
“And here we are — 36 years later — in that facility,” she said.
In the early 2000s, Bon Secours opened additional child care centers at Memorial Regional and St. Francis hospitals. Across all three sites, the centers have about 400 children enrolled, some of them part-time.
This fall, they’re planning to increase capacity at their St. Mary’s site — and are considering adding capacity at the St. Francis site within the next couple of years, as demand has continued to exceed the supply of available slots.
Musselman said the on-site child care centers have served as a tool for both recruitment and retention; turnover rates among employees with kids in their child care sites are much lower than rates across the larger organization.
“We do know we make a huge impact when it comes to retention,” she said.
Windley Gravatt, a senior HR executive with Bon Secours, told VPM News that it’s probably more difficult to open new child care centers now than it was in the 1980s, “which I think is a huge barrier to entry for employers.”
She said if there was a way to set up a network of consultants or other set of resources for employers to tap into to help them get started – it would go a long way.
“Getting in is so daunting, and there’s a lot of liability,” Gravatt said. “You want to make sure you’re doing it right. You’re taking care of the youngest members of our community. And it can be stressful.”
Musselman said if she were advising companies looking to open child care centers today, she’d tell them to first determine whether it’s a need that employees would value and use.
Then, they’d need to determine what level of enrollment would be necessary to offset the costs of operating a center. Years ago, that number was about 40 children; she said it’s likely a higher number now.
Musselman said there are “a lot of creative ways” to address the child care needs of employees. For example, she’s heard of a group of employers in Northern Virginia getting together to open one center to serve the kids of their collective employees.
The Southwest Virginia nonprofit EO partnered with Ballad Health to create additional subsidized child care slots in the region through a tri-share model — the inspiration behind a pilot program that was recently vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Other organizations are coming up with creative solutions, too. Red Rooster Coffee in Floyd created its own child care center for employees, and Virginia Tech’s foundation has helped finance the operations of some area child care providers as a tool for staff recruitment and retention at the university.
Kristi Snyder, owner and administrator of Rainbow Riders Child Care Center in Blacksburg, said the Virginia Tech funds allowed them to double the size of their operations in 2009. In recent years, the university has also expanded its financial support to other child care providers in Pearisburg and Roanoke.
“It shows the commitment that Virginia Tech has to their working families,” Snyder said. “They understand child care is so important for their faculty and students to be able to do their jobs … that employees are more focused and more productive when they know their children are in a high quality, positive learning environment.”
Helen Wallace, executive director of the Giles Health and Family Center, said if more employers recognized the true costs required to provide quality child care, “I think they would be more willing to support or subsidize and work with their employees more to provide economic assistance.”
Wallace said she offers a big discount on child care at her center to employees; they only pay a quarter of the total enrollment cost.
Whitelow, with the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, added that the child care provider KinderCare is trying to partner with businesses to bring child care operations to them.
“KinderCare would actually just use a room in your building and bring a child care facility to you,” Whitelow said. “There are many solutions. Some private businesses are stepping up and seeing an opportunity.”
The Lego Group has partnered with KinderCare outside of Virginia, but a spokesperson for the company did not respond to a request for comment about whether the company plans to provide or subsidize child care for employees of the new factory it’s building in Chesterfield County.
