Dodge County residents are being asked to provide input about childcare in the community.
Genna Faulkner said that in October of 2020 the Fremont Family Coalition applied for multiple grants through the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation. Those grants included Faulkner’s position as early childhood community coordinator and also a grant to do quality and capacity building in the community in childcare centers. Another part was early-learning scholarships which help subsidize the rates of childcare for parents.
There was also an initiative to help the Spanish-speaking population to find quality childcare or even to start up another licensed facility in the community that primarily speaks Spanish.
“One of our first steps, when I came on in January, was that we needed to do this survey to really find out what the needs and gaps are in our community,” Faulkner said. “But also what are we doing right?”
Faulkner said her organization worked with the Fremont Area Chamber of Commerce to create some questions for childcare providers. It was designed to get an idea of how much the providers were making and other aspects such as if they get sick or vacation time.
“The chamber was approached by a couple of different providers in our community asking for that to happen,” Faulkner said. “We thought our survey and the wage survey would do well together so that is why we’re doing it.”
The information will be tabulated to find out what is working well and what needs improvement.
“If you don’t have kids, you don’t necessarily see that it is an issue or that it is a problem,” Faulkner said. “But our business owners have kind of an inkling that if you can’t find quality childcare and you don’t know your kids are safe, you can’t go to work.”
Faulkner said a large portion of the workforce has children.
“So we need to have quality childcare in our community and how do we do that better?” she said.
The survey is available at the fremontunitedway.org website. It is also on the Fremont Family Coalition Facebook page or go to: http://bit.ly/DodgeCoEarlyChildhood for it.
Faulkner wants as many residents in the community as possible to participate in the survey. Officials hope to close the survey with a large number of participants by the end of October.
After officials collate the data, they will work with First Five Nebraska to set up lunch and learn meetings with local businesses, the chamber, childcare providers and other entities.
“First Five is doing a really good job of bridging that gap between us as a nonprofit and the business community,” Faulkner said.
The Early Childhood Community Coordinator said childcare is important to everyone, not just those with children.
“If a business owner can see that he can’t have employees because his workers don’t have childcare or they’re continually showing up late because their babysitter is late, that is a domino effect that affects that community as a whole,” Faulkner said. “I think if people don’t have kids (that age) they think it doesn’t mean anything to them, but it really does affect our whole community.”
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