EXCERPT FROM: Lahontan Valley News
By Stephanie Carroll
The Children's Cabinet has produced a 2009 demographics report for child care in Northern Nevada that shows the state lacks available, affordable and quality child care services especially in rural areas.
Marty Elquist, Child Care Resource and Referral coordinator, said national studies link early child care with later success in school and the workforce. She said 90 percent of brain development occurs from birth to 5 years old.
“The experiences that we chose for our children when we plan to go to work, are essential for developing them for the rest of their lives,” Elquist said.
The report states that only 22.35 percent of Nevada's child care needs are met by licensed and school-age programs, so a quarter of a million Nevada children are cared for by family, friends and neighbor care, self-care, nonresidential parents or parents working opposite shifts. Approximately 7 percent of children in the state ages 6-9, 26 percent ages 10-12 and 47 percent ages 13-14 are in self-care on a regular basis.
In Churchill County 62.71 percent of children ages 0-4 and 73.11 ages 6-17 have working parents. There are 5,705 children in need of child care in Churchill County, but there are only 13 licensed child care facilities (including centers, family child care homes and family group child care homes) that constitute a capacity of 513. There are three school-age programs with an average daily attendance of 154.
“In the rural areas there's just not a lot of child care centers,” Elquist said. “I think in rural counties there's preference to folks to use family members when they can. We 1,000 percent support that.”
Elquist said the cabinet members are concerned specifically when the unlicensed care is untrained and low quality. Elquist said if parents can find child care, it's usually not affordable.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and human Services, child care is considered affordable when it is no more than 10 percent of a family's income. The average cost of center-based infant care is $8,987 or 29.43 percent of the median wage, center-based pre-school care is 24.04, and school-age is 21.6 percent. The report found that child care is unaffordable for over half of Nevada's individual wage earners.
Working families' child care subsidies are also low in Nevada, based on the 2004 market rates. Forty states updated their reimbursement rates in 2006 or more recently.
The report also shows that the quality of child care providers is low, 67.11 percent only have a high school diploma and less than 30 percent have an associate's degree or higher. Additionally, turnover is high, and child care workers' recommended training is not equal to their compensation.
To handle these problems, the Children's Cabinet made recommendations for state and local governments regarding demand, supply affordability and workforce quality.
Nevertheless, she said community members also need to educate themselves and become a voice to local and state governments.
“People can talk to their city leaders, their county leaders, to make sure there are investments made in childcare,” Elquist said. “We're merely trying to encourage people to be advocates — for those parents that feel trapped.”