Supporting Childcare Solutions in Washington County with Rob Johnson and Heidi Luft

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This week, Rob Johnson, the CEO of Kettle Moraine YMCA and The Secretary of the West Bend Community Foundation is back in the studio with me, and this time, he's joined by Heidi Luft, the Executive Director of Supporting Families Together Association, and together, they're here to talk about the state of child care in our community, and what the West Bend Community Foundation, along with several other community partners, are doing to help find solutions to our need for more child care providers in our state.

in the area. And with that, here are 15 minutes on supporting child care solutions in Washington County with Rob Johnson and Heidi Luft on 15 Minutes with Fuzz.

Rob, Heidi, thank you for coming on the show. Rob, you joined me a few weeks ago to talk about some of the exciting updates you have at the Kettle Moraine YMCA, talking about the fitness facilities and, all that. But fitness is just part of the why, and obviously the why is also very involved in Child care in our community as well, and you're involved heavily in the community.

Outside of just the Y, you're also part of the West Bend Community Foundation, and we're here to talk today about just that, child care and the community. So, first of all, can you just give us an overview from a high level of what the Kettle Moraine YMCA does, in terms of child care? Can we start there?

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We also serve Ozaukee County. But then the second piece that we actually serve more kids is in the school age. So that's going to be before school, after school, at every single elementary school, or we pick up and bring them to the YMCA. And we just finished up summer day camp. We had 1, 100 kids in summer day camp this summer at four locations.

1100 kids every single day. We had 90 camp counselors that we had to hire to help, obviously, to deliver that program this summer. Now we've transitioned into the school year. Most of the schools started this week. Some of the parochial schools started last week. So that's kind of the impetus of the YMCA, which is a huge component of what we do.

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Can you tell us about that committee and how that plays a role into this child care conversation and what it's doing to support?

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That puts tremendous stress on everyone. It puts most of the stress on the parents, right? They, they have to go to work and they have to have a provider. So what our West Bend Community Foundation does is every year we have about 250, 000 that we allocate out to agencies that do wonderful work in the community.

Broad spectrum of work. Okay, but what they said is we really need to prioritize What is the biggest need in our community? So we brought in a lot of our agencies that work in the community And we said, where do we need to invest our funds? And everyone said child care is the most needed area right now.

So we formed a committee, our community impact committee. And, what we did is we identified really four priorities. So those priorities are invest in high quality early childhood education facilities, invest in expanding workforce options, Advocate for increased child care access, like you had identified.

Work with agencies to provide four areas of development around physical, cognitive, language, and social emotional development for children zero to eight years of age. Doesn't mean we forget about the kids that are older than that, but we know that we can have our biggest impact on their brain development from zero to eight, so that really is the core of what we're working on.

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So we sat down with Forward Careers, which is a local agency that does amazing work already in this area. And I'll talk about a little bit more specific about what they're going to provide. We sat down with Moraine Park Technical College, which obviously is a great, resource that we're very fortunate to have locally.

One of their campuses here out of their three, and then Four Seas of Wisconsin is another wonderful resource that we have that can provide certifications and a lot of the childcare providers use them directly already.

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Is that, that the hope there?

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We want them to be a lead teacher as well. But then we already have the existing workforce that really needs to have that education, further education. So the cool thing about this is that 4Cs can get you the certification so that we can get them into work right away. That's the most important thing, right?

But if they want to go into a career in early childhood education, that's where Marine Park comes in. So they can actually get a two year technical degree, they can get a certificate, associate's degree, whatever they want. But then Forward Careers, this is the most exciting part about this, it ties it all together, is they are the workforce side of it.

So what they're going to do, is they're actually going to pay for 350 hours of that employee's time as long as they're going to get these certifications. So it's an incentive. So the YMCA, we talked about us as a child care provider. If Fuzz comes into us and says he wants to work for the YMCA, I can hire Fuzz on, and I'm going to say, Okay, Fuzz, we need to get you certified.

I work with Forward Careers. They're going to pay your first 350 hours to work for the Y, but you have to go to class and you have to get certified or, or if you're already an existing staff person, you can go and get upskilled with more education. So, it's like the perfect storm to have these three agencies that really can do all the work together and Very limited, exposure or expense for the employer to do it.

I mean at the end of the day, we always know that really funds are the thing that prevents people from doing things. Right.

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Our partner foundation, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, which is the big umbrella, they said they would match it, so that's the 300, 000. And then I talked to Josh Shulman at the county, and he knows that child care is a huge workforce issue, right, and if we want to get these young families to come and live in our community, We have to have child care, so Josh put in 100, 000, so we have 400, 000 that we can use over three years.

to basically provide free education training opportunities for anyone in the early childhood education field. It's just awesome.

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It's a, it's really a career of passion, I think, for a lot of individuals. So, what From that 4Cs training, what kind of, and, and Moraine Park and those kind of things, what kind of training and, and background that people need to get in order to be certified in this?

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So 4Cs is going to be the certification side that we talked about. So that's typically going to be like an 80 hour class. Okay. Okay. To get them to be an assistant teacher, certified assistant teacher in a classroom. Sure. Okay? Sure. They do an additional 80 hours, they can become a lead teacher. And then we also have, Shaken Baby Syndrome, we have a bunch of different other certifications that help to support that work.

Mm hmm. But that, I just kind of gave you the summary side of it. Sure. Now if they actually do on the credit based side of it, with Moraine Park, It would typically be a three credit course in Intro to Education, there's just a whole gamut of different coursework that they can do, and that would also get them certified, but that would also lead them into that career in early childhood education.

And you kind of hit it on the head, you know, most of the child care providers are paying, you know, 12 to 15 an hour. We obviously want to lift that up. We know how important child care is. The challenge is that we have to charge more to be able to do that. So I know like infant care right now, it's 350 a week.

You and I talked about that before.

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oh you know, this little business, it's like so glowing. Yeah. And I was very thankful when my. My oldest is now a junior in college, but the why was there when we, you know, had before school care and we needed, you know, to drop Bri off before school so we can get to work and that was, that was there when we needed it and without that it would have, you know, put a damper on some of our careers and those kind of things and, just juggling Paying the bills and all that stuff.

So, but having the resources of people there to make sure that, that those are there for people with careers is very important to a community.

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30 in the morning, They go to their elementary school programs during the day. They go into an after school program right in their site. Mom or dad can pick them up at that point. Grandma or grandpa. Safe, secure. There's so many benefits to it. So a huge thank you to the school districts who are partners in that.

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And, uh, you know, this work that, 4C has been funded to do is just, it's perfectly aligned with what they're here for. They, they provide really great trainings. They're one of our stronger agencies that offers just a ton of trainings to help providers get regulated, certified, and they're also around to provide any other kind of support that you may need.

So any type of issue or question or problem that comes up, they're there, you can give them a call. They can provide some one on one coaching or connect with other resources in the community. 4C is also really engaged in a lot of our advocacy efforts, so I know one of the goals here is to advocate for increased child care access and that's something that Supporting Families Together Association, we coordinate statewide efforts to do advocacy for just that and so I'm excited to see that here as a goal as well because We know that to see really substantial changes in this kind of child care crisis that we're in right now, it's going to take collaborative advocacy, and that's definitely a role that 4C and Supporting Families Together Association can have, with this initiative here.

And 4C also, they're one of our child care resource and referral agencies that is a joint agency. Also being considered or classified as a family resource center. And so here I see another one of these goals is to work with agencies to provide, or areas of development among kids. And the family resource centers really do a lot of that work.

They are focused on, primarily, like prevention of child abuse and neglect, but before it even happens. And the way that we do that is. Helping to, develop strong families, really great parenting skills that facilitate all those areas of development. So just really pleased and grateful, for the opportunity that has been given to 4C to be part of this super important work.

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So, they're actually going to get a, written letter of directions of what the next steps are. So, if you're a child care provider out there right now, you're going to get a letter from myself, and you can certainly reach out to me at the Kettle Moraine YMCA as well. But, you're going to get this letter.

It's going to basically identify that you can either contact 4C, and all of them work with these agencies already, but you can contact 4Cs, Moraine Park Technical College, or Forward Careers. And basically you can tell him, I want to get Fuzz into a class, I need to get him upskilled so that he can get an associate degree so ultimately he could be a site director at one of your child care locations.

Or I just have a new person, I have a new Heidi who's coming into the workforce and she wants to work in child care, I want to get her signed up. All of the coursework is free, so this is perfect. Now, the biggest challenge that they're going to have is, how do I take Fuzz out of the classroom to let him do the work, right?

That's where Forward Careers is great, that they're going to pay for your salary for up to 350 hours at 15 an hour, so if you make more, make less. Obviously, you might have to cover some of that, but they're basically going to cover that cost for you to be able to do this either outside your regular hours or even while you're working because kids nap, right?

There's things that they can do during nap time. They can do some of their coursework and things like that. So, all child care providers can reach out to any of those three agencies and they can start doing that right away. Really exciting. And then, I just want to piggyback on what Heidi said. Fuzz. cc Family Center of Washington County has been around for a long time and I know there are so many families that have benefited from those open play times, dad and me times, or mom and me times, right?

And the YMCA plays an integral role in that as well because we have so many families that come in and we obviously refer people over there, you know, if they're struggling with a situation or developmental issue or something like that. Family Center is so positioned, so well positioned to be able to help these families during difficult times and, and these are, majority of these are free programs as well, so people just need to know about these, you know, opportunities.

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Oh yeah, okay. The LVS Center over there with the Threshold and Interfaith, all those agencies right there. Okay.

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But this is actually a great year to get involved because we're taking a little bit of a different approach. Typically, we've had like this big advocacy day at the Capitol and those are great, but Advocacy is something that needs to be ongoing, right? So this year we're trying to formulate a kind of new, like structure for advocacy and we're going and making it a little bit more accessible.

So we're going to be doing some initial webinars that teach people how to put together a pitch. If you want to talk to your representative, and then having opportunities for them to practice that pitch with peers and then helping them to figure out how to set up meetings with their representative in their district.

So this winter is going to be more district focused. And then in spring, we'll do another like capital, like advocacy day at the Capitol. But this is a great opportunity because You can watch the webinars after the fact if, you know, you can't get it, you know, off of work or you can't attend for whatever reason.

And you don't have to travel to Madison if you live outside of Madison, right? You can plan to do advocacy right where you're living in your district. So, so yeah, keep an eye out. We'll be advertising that. We'll, we'll let Rob know so he can let the community know as well.

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listening or if they're, maybe their, their child who's going through school is interested in this, what's, what's the first step to take?

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At the end of the day it's not about competition between providers, we need more providers, we all know that. So you can certainly work on that side of it. If you are a person right now that's looking for employment and you like working with kids, we would love to have you at our organization and so would the other providers.

So, you can just apply and we will get you in the door and we will get you certified. And we're going to pay for your certification so there's nothing out of your pocket yourself, to be able to do that, which is wonderful. And if you're already working in the field and you hear about this, say to yourself, Hey, where do I want to be?

Right? There's nothing wrong with, you know, being an assistant teacher, but you know what? You're going to get paid more at the Y. You get paid more, the more certification you have. So let's continue to go to school, continue to get an education. Doesn't mean you're going to have to be in the childcare field forever, but like I talked about those camp counselors that we have, many of those are teachers.

Well, they have to work with kids. So if they work for the Y during the summertime, they And they do it for two or three summers. And then they go and they apply for a job. As a school teacher, they're going to say, have you ever worked with 20 kids in a group? Yeah. I led 20 kids in a group during my summer day camp.

You know, it's all experience that they can get. So if you're out there and you want to increase your knowledge around, early childhood education, or just, you know, knowledge around education as a whole, certainly we can get you integrated.

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And it's great to see that. There are individuals and organizations coming together to try to take care of this issue and and also thank you for coming in today. Thanks for having us. Thank you again to Heidi Luft of Supporting Families Together Foundation and Rob Johnson of the West Bend Community Foundation and the Kettle Moraine YMCA for joining me on this week's episode of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.

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