Jefferson Community College and its partners have come together to help address the problem of child care deserts in the North Country. A child care desert is a region in which the number of children in need of care vastly exceeds the slots available in that region’s child care facilities (if there are any at all). Due to staffing shortages, financial hardships and the general instability providers continue to face, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, child care programs are permanently closing their doors, in record numbers. This mass extinction of available programming has significantly expanded existing deserts and created new problem areas. Without access to child care, parents are unable to work resulting in a compounding, negative impact on the economy as well as on the individual families. JCC collaborated with the Watertown Small Business Development Center, Community Action Planning Council and with Jefferson & Lewis Counties in an effort to address these concerns. They provided the elements of the first North Country Regulated Home Day Care Training Bootcamp offered through the college at no cost to participants
In the recently completed pilot program, participants attended childhood development classes, business workshops, and one-on-one mentorships to begin their own home daycares. The eight new entrepreneurs who completed the boot camp are now enrolled in the college’s Introduction to Early Childhood Development course at no cost this semester. The program will create up to 60 new child care slots. The Workforce Development Institute supported the program with a grant to JCC for computers to assist new child care operators with program and financial reporting. The new cohort of nineteen participants recently started this March.
