Business Officials Pilot Consulting, Cost-Share Programs To Address Child Care Shortage

In 2023, an estimated 20,000 West Virginia children under age six were unable to receive child care due to capacity issues, according to an August 2024 report from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.

Will Miller, interim state director for the West Virginia Small Business Development Center (SBDC), sees that as a workforce issue. The less parents can rely on child care centers, the less likely they are to reenter the workforce as their children age.

“That’s one of the big impacts of the child care problem in the state,” Miller said. “People want to keep working. But they can’t find enough spots for child care, or they can’t afford to put the kid in child care and then work at the same time.”

That is a major reason the SBDC is launching a pair of dual pilot programs under a new project entitled “Childcare West Virginia: Building the Business that Supports Business.”

The project will encompass two new interventions from the state, which Miller said the SBDC hopes can reduce barriers to both operating and accessing child care services.

The Childcare Business Assistance Program

The SBDC’s Childcare Business Assistance (CBA) program looks to support the owners of for-profit child care facilities across the state. The program will provide financial training to newly registered child care providers, and longer-term financial consulting for child care centers already in place.

This advisory support aims to help child care businesses “so that they can be sustainable” and “add more employees, therefore add more spots for kids and therefore keep more people in the workforce,” Miller said.

The SBDC will provide training and consultation support through Wonderschool, a company that provides “comprehensive child care solutions,” according to its website. Wonderschool already operates in communities across the country affected by child care shortages, according to Miller.

If a new child care business were to seek out support from the SBDC, Miller said his organization could ask Wonderschool to audit their finances and identify ways to save more money and improve services.

“Through coaching, they would go from ideas through the sign-up process, through all the legal boxes,” Miller said. “I mean, top to bottom, take you from idea to door open.”

The CBA program is actively reviewing new businesses to work with through the Wonderschool website.

West Virginia Tri-Share

The other program, known as West Virginia Tri-Share, is a cost-share program that splits child care expenses between a resident, their employer and, through the SBDC, the state.

By using state dollars to partially subsidize child care, Miller said the SBDC could help more parents reenter the workforce without financial hang-ups.

“The whole design of this is the child care provider still makes what they have to make just to keep the lights on,” Miller said. “The employer has a benefit they can give to their employees to keep a good staff. And then the employee can lessen the burden of their child care costs and make it worth their while to stay in the workforce.”

Miller said the Tri-Share program follows a similar program enacted in Michigan, and will work with places of employment that volunteer to participate. The program will formally begin in March, and interested businesses can find more information on the Wonderschool website.

A First Step

The pilot programs will begin on a limited basis, servicing just eight counties in the state: Boone, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Mason, Putnam, Roane and Wirt counties.

The Appalachian Regional Commission funded both programs through economic development grants, which go toward regions of Appalachia affected by the decline of the coal industry.

The grant request was submitted by the SBDC in conjunction with the West Virginia Economic Development Office, West Virginia’s Workforce Resiliency Office and Wonderschool.

Miller said he does not see the programs as a catch-all solution to the state’s child care crisis, but rather a first step toward identifying solutions.

“It addresses something that is pretty epidemic around the country,” he said. “Now, this isn’t a silver bullet that’s going to fix everything. But [with] this program, we’re trying to attack it from a different angle.”

Throughout the pilot process, Miller said the SBDC and its partners will monitor the programs’ results on participating counties and businesses. If they prove successful, he said they hope to expand the services to all 55 West Virginia counties in the future.

“We’re starting with these counties, and we’re hoping we can have success and learn from this, adjust what we’re doing from this, and roll it out across the whole state,” Miller said.