Sam Patterson, childcare director at the newly opened Seward Wellness Center, knows the challenges childcare providers face when staff members need a sick day or a vacation.
Patterson started working at a daycare as a high school student, was a nanny in Lincoln while taking general education courses and later worked at a childcare center before completing her degree and becoming a childcare center director.
“I really love this whole early childhood thing,” she said.
But she also sees the potential problems. She has seen staffing issues from a staff, director and parents’ perspective.
Whether it is a planned day to attend their own children’s activities or a last-minute sick day, when a childcare worker takes a day off, it could be problematic for the childcare center or daycare that must maintain specific child-to-staff ratios.
An individual provider might have to leave some or all of its families without daycare depending upon the situation.
In recent years, the Seward County Chamber and Development Partnership has worked with communities and daycare providers to add around 200 childcare spots to meet area families’ needs.
Last October, Seward County daycare providers, meeting with the SCCDP childcare group, said finding qualified substitute workers is also a priority to keep those spots available.
Jacob Jennings, SCCDP vice president and director of community affairs, said the group logically looked to the systems schools use to create a pool of qualified substitute teachers who could be available on short notice.
“Nothing like that exists for childcare providers,” Jennings said.
Adding to the complexity is the requirement that every worker in a daycare has to complete a background check, including fingerprinting, and other registration at the state level. Unlike other certifications and licenses, until recently, childcare workers’ information was linked to the employer, not the employee.
That meant if they changed jobs, or added a second job, the background check had to be repeated.
The 2024 Nebraska Unicameral’s LB 874 made those background checks more portable, following an individual from job to job, or allowing them to work at more than one daycare center at a time.
“That legislation makes this a lot more feasible,” Jennings said.
The Department of Health and Human Services is still working through how that portability will work, but in Seward County, it is a key piece to the staffing puzzle.
The opening of the Seward Wellness Center and its plans to provide child watch services for center users and the Jays Club before- and after-school program offered another puzzle piece.
Patterson and her husband, Trevor, and son, Clay, moved to Seward just before the owner of the Lincoln childcare center she directed told Patterson she was selling the business. On the same day, Seward offered her the wellness center job.
City Administrator Greg Butcher said Patterson was one of the full-time employees to come on board at the wellness center before it opened, some working part-time at first as they hired staff and prepared rooms and programs.
“Since we do have a childcare out there, this may be something we can utilize,” Butcher said.
The city has offered child watch services since the wellness center opened, which Patterson oversees in addition to making plans for the Jays Club. But the city anticipates she will have some time available over the summer.
So on April 1, the city of Seward and the SCCDP approved a memorandum of understanding to use Patterson’s available time this summer to help create a childcare substitute pool like that used by K-12 schools for teachers in addition to her primary duties.
She will help organize a network of qualified, state-certified workers who could substitute in Seward’s licensed daycare centers, and SCCDP will reimburse the city for the time expended on the project.
Jonathan Jank, SCCDP president and CEO, said the opportunity is exciting.
The SCCDP has contracted with Grace Reef, a consultant who has helped start networks of childcare substitute workers in New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio to work with Patterson on the project, Jank said.
Patterson said she has already talked with Reef via Zoom and will help schedule a time for her to work onsite with Seward’s group.
“One of the reasons I really want to do this is because as a director and a teacher, there is always a burnout and I want to help lessen that,” Patterson said. “There’s always people calling in or wanting a day off.”
That kind of schedule pressure could improve a daycare center’s ability to recruit and retain teachers, she said.
“I think that childcare and day cares are underestimated,” Patterson said, noting their role in educating and caring for children, as well as the pressures on staff. “I can see why people get burned out.”
She is already thinking about questions they need to answer, like what childcare providers need, what substitute staff need, and what would entice past or part-time childcare providers to become substitutes.
The opportunity to create a solution for Seward childcare providers is exciting.
“We are pushing this as fast as we can,” Patterson said.
The system Seward defines could become the model for the rest of the county and other parts of the state, Jank said.
SCCDP is now working with a large foundation to fund a three-year period in which the substitute worker pool could be scaled up. Jank anticipates another MOU will be created to solidify the work between the city of Seward, the consultant, the foundation and SCCDP.
“We are effectively serving as dot connectors here,” Jank said. “We really hope to upscale this for all Nebraska.”
The project fits into the SCCDP’s strategic plan to support childcare that offers capacity and scalability while creating an environment where childcare positions are supported and seen as a career choice destination.
Jank said other states that have substitute pools for childcare workers have state appropriations to help sustain the work.
