From the San Juan Islands of Washington’s Joyce L. Sobel Family Resource Center to Wisconsin’s The Growing Tree Child Care Center and New Hampshire’s YMCA of Greater Nashua down to Florida’s Love and Glory learning center in Tampa across to Sparks, Nevada’s Little Bear Preschool & Childcare, childcare providers face the same problem everywhere–childcare workers shortage.
After the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered most childcare businesses and slashed jobs, its effects on the childcare industry have been brutal. With 1 in 5 jobs lost in the childcare industry last year, the industry is yet to bounce back to its pre-pandemic state, which in reality was already in crisis even before the pandemic.
As daycare centers struggle to hire or re-hire staff, it produces a domino effect affecting not only working parents but the US economy.
To keep on serving their communities, childcare directors and managers must find ways to have enough staff to operate at the state-mandated ratio.
Since hiring qualified childcare workers has become more difficult due to the pandemic, childcare providers have to be more creative, flexible, and resourceful to be able to provide adequate quality childcare
Short on childcare staff? Here are some ways to make it work.
1. Creative scheduling for childcare workers
To meet childcare needs of all enrolled kids, some childcare providers have had to give childcare staff a rotating schedule to meet the demand for the right staff-to-child ratio.
To ensure your scheduling is a success, it’s best to as your staff what schedule works for them best and plot it against your current enrollment.
Some may prefer to work one continuous shift while other may prefer to work odd hours, especially during peak times of childcare.
For example, re-assigning a staff to a different classroom while nap time can lighten the load for everyone.
A staff can use this to prepare props for the next activity, complete their assessments of children in their care, or study about recent developments in childcare.
Most childcare providers are struggling with very strict 1:4 staff-to-child allocation, especially since it’s been simply harder to hire qualified childcare staff these days..
While it is ideal, especially with young children which need constant supervision, this ratio also easily becomes a limiting factor in how many children daycares can take in.
Most childcare providers often report that they had to either turn away parents looking for childcare or add them to their growing waitlists, with some parents being on their waitlist for years.
2. Familiarity breeds consistency
Young children’s development thrives on consistency and routine.
But as staff get shuffled around to meet the ratio, childcare providers would need to apply familiarization techniques on the children to ensure their sense of consistency and routine is not compromised.
Get the children used to knowing and seeing all childcare staff early on.
This way, regardless of staff-to-child pairings, the children will not detect any significant change on which teacher is handling them for various activities.
Cross-training staff on all activities within the program allows you more flexibility and also ensures everyone knows how to handle each activity instead of having an assigned staff for a particular activity.
There may be exceptions to this like cooking the children’s meals, for example.
3. Federal financial support
Childcare staff shortages have been a consistent problem in the childcare industry.
Unable to provide competitive compensation or benefits, most childcare workers either leave the industry or get hired by corporate childcare providers.
Thus, the bulk of smaller childcare businesses which provide childcare services have a much harder time hiring staff for their daycares to run at full capacity.
Some providers have reported they used available federal financial aid to pay for wages while others used it to augment the hourly wages in order to provide a more competitive pay.
Currently, the childcare industry is suffering from staff shortage all over the country.
These proposed solutions are mere band aids to a much more pressing problem–undervalued, underpaid sector of the workforce.
To address the childcare staff shortage, and childcare supply, in the long run, it’s high time childcare providers are given government funding and support.
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