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Iowa’s Childcare Crisis could be alleviated with promising pilot program
DES MOINES, IOWA — There is a shortfall of roughly fifty thousand childcare spaces in Iowa at any given time. Lack of childcare is the number one barrier to financial self-sufficiency for women, so the Iowa Women’s Foundation launched a pilot program last year in an effort to create more options for families.
The “Childcare Solutions Fund” is a private-public partnership started in the fall of 2023 in seven Iowa counties and in just nine months it’s shown great impact: creating hundreds of new childcare slots by adding staff and increasing wages.
“So Childcare Solutions funds are really merging public and private dollars to create a fund locally that child care providers can tap into to enhance wages,” says Deann Cooke, President and CEO of the Iowa Women’s Foundation, “Whether they do that through retention bonuses or hourly increases to pay people a living wage, but boosting up the wages for the child care workforce. So that people choose to go into that career and stay there.”
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