2021 Children's Council Economic Recovery Year 2

Economic Recovery Campaign Year 2: Child Care: It Matters to Kids, It Matters to Business

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Why this matters: Kids

Josefina’s Story Josefina is a single working mom in Hunter’s Point. She has three kids ages 2, 3 and 5 whom she adores. Her husband passed away last year from COVID. She is having a hard time making ends meet. Some days there is not enough to eat.

Josefina starts work at 5am as a hospital orderly and works 12-hour shifts. She can’t afford child care, so her elderly 85-year old mother watches the children while she works.

Their grandmother does the best she can, but three kids is a lot for an 85year old. The 5-year-old helps a lot.

Mostly, the kids watch tv or play video games.

Josefina is overwhelmed. She doesn’t know how she would pay for child care. The few places she has looked at would take up more than half her salary. She knows of no child care programs near her home. How would she even get them there at 5am? childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

Impact on Children If Josefina had made it to Children's Council, her story may have gone differently. Hers may have turned out like Janelle’s. Janelle is a client who worked with Donna, a Family Support Navigator at Children’s Council. Donna was able to find care for Janelle’s two toddlers so that she could take a new job in the well-paying construction industry starting at 4:15am. Donna also helped Janelle find special services to meet the needs of her son who is autistic. When scheduling problems arose, Donna was there to help Janelle qualify for backup care.

What difference does this make to a child? To them, it might mean that on the first day of kindergarten they would likely know how to: • •

Use crayons or scissors Share a toy

• •

Follow a set of directions Resolve conflict using words

When children's brains have the social-emotional development provided by a high-quality early education program, they feel less frustrated at school. They are more likely to feel like they fit it in.

They are more likely to take their first steps into kindergarten ready to learn, not ready to fail.

To address the inequity in the K-12 system, we MUST start with our youngest learners at ages 0 to 5. childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

Why this matters: Business

Gabriella and John’s Story Gabriella and John have two kids ages 2 and 5. They both work. When the pandemic hit, they tag-teamed to cover child care.

By using the Children’s Council Child Care Finder search engine, they were able to find home-based early education for the 2-year-old, but remote learning for their kindergartner was a mess.

It soon became clear that the situation wasn’t tenable. Gabriella cut her hours to help with remote schooling, but it wasn’t enough. Eventually, she quit.

Gabriella believed that her employers wouldn’t be sympathetic to her child care problems. When she left, the company incurred $20,000 in recruiting and training costs. They also lost diversity in their executive team and the head of their DEI committee.

It took the company more than eight months to fill her position. This put them behind the competition whose familyfriendly HR teams helped them retain staff. childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

Impact on Businesses If Gabriella and John had had two kids under the age of five, they would have been better off in terms of child care. Because of efforts like our Economic Recovery Campaign, child care programs in San Francisco that were in peril stayed open. Women are almost half the workforce, and for San Francisco to work, businesses need to consider child carean integral part of employee retention. Here are ways Children’s Council supports women in the work force and San Francisco businesses. We: • •

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Ensure early education providers stay open, even when schools don’t Help early education programs retain staff through professional development workshops and wage advocacy efforts Provide services like our Child Care Finder search engine, so that parents can easily find an early education center in their neighborhood

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Advocate at the state and city level for adequate child care funding, so families can afford child care and get back to work Connect families who want to work and can’t afford child care with alternative payment options Enlist business leaders in projects like the Women’s Business Leadership Council to brainstorm family-friendly HR practices that support employee retention

childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

The situation: Child Care and the Pandemic In March 2020: San Francisco saw an initial 25% decrease in licensed child care at the onset of the pandemic. In response, we launched our Economic Recovery Campaign aimed at keeping child care providers open. *Children’s Council works with all types of child care facilities, not just licensed centers childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

Economic Recovery Year One Results In 2021, we were part of an advocacy effort to direct funds to child care providers in peril. We helped the state administer Business Interruption Grants and with the help of donors and foundations, we were able to create innovative programs to address the needs of child care providers by listening and responding in real-time:

$3,546,000

$1,720,000

Emergency Child Care Business Interruption Grants

$22,000

Cleaning Supply Stipends

Health and Safety Training Created with the Dept. Of Health for Child Care Businesses to stay open

$13,800,000

10,000

Wages Supplements for Early Education Center Staff

Emergency “To Go” Dinners made by child care centers

And IT IS WORKING! We have maintained our same number of child care centers despite tremendous adversity. But the pandemic is NOT over. Though we have programs to make them stronger, these businesses are still on the brink. childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

The situation: Child Care and the Pandemic As of January 2022: Child care providers that engaged with Children’s Council stayed open or re-opened but…

• Children are still waiting: During the pandemic, we assisted 20,000 families, but 2,000-3,000 children are still waiting to find child care.

• Child Care businesses are still fragile: Even though most of the child care businesses supported by Children's Council made it through the pandemic, many of them are still fragile. Our programs give early educators the skills and support to be resilient.

• Businesses are still struggling to hire back employees: Our programs allow employees to find affordable child care and get back to work. childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

Economic Recovery Year Two: How YOU Can Help

Both the children and businesses of San Francisco need a deeper investment at this year's end to ensure that everyone comes out of the pandemic. There are still 2000-3000 children in San Francisco waiting for child care assistance. There are businesses that are still on the brink.

We need ALL our early educators to stay open and we need to open more child care spaces. The more unrestricted dollars we can raise, the more people and businesses we can incorporate into our programs. Given the funds, we can provide innovative and timely solutions to 2022's child care problems, just as we did in 2021. childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

The need: This is how you can help: • $1,500: Help a new child care business launch with our BizNest Program.

Since its inception, we have opened 384 more child care spots.

• $3,000: Make five child care providers more resilient by allowing them to attend our "Fundamentals of Running a Family Child Care" workshop.

Each year, approximately 400 microentrepreneurs participate and report more confidence in their ability to run a business.

• $5,000: Buy computers and internet access for people attending our Black Apprenticeship Pipeline program to increase number of Black early educators. Today we only have 10 Black home-based child providers in our public system. Our program will graduate 80 over two years.

• $10,000: Pay 1/7 of a staff member's salary to provide "wraparound services" to families: child care, parenting, food, legal, health and/or housing. We are experts in navigating the child care system and leveraging government dollars. childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf

Give San Francisco the strength to raise itself up Plan your impact with: Eileen Morris Director of Major Gifts and Planned Giving Children’s Council of San Francisco

Email: emorris@childrenscouncil.org Phone: 415-343-3352 childrenscouncil.org •facebook.com/childrenscouncil • twitter.com/childcaresf