Skagit County is getting its first employer-based child care program. However, it’s not clear when, or if, other businesses in Whatcom and Skagit counties might follow that lead.
The tantalizing announcement — for a county labeled a child care desert — came in a single sentence deep inside a recent Skagit County news release about increases in local child care capacity. “To help businesses recruit and retain employees and expand access further,” the release read, “efforts to offer employer-based child care, a first for Skagit County, are also underway.”
Those efforts are being managed by the Center for Retention & Expansion of Child Care Northwest (C-RECC), part of the Bellingham-based nonprofit Opportunity Council.
The forthcoming pilot project, according to C-RECC’s website, “will provide up to $75,000 of federal pandemic relief funding to help one or more employers in Skagit County open a child care center for their employees and the community.” The facility is anticipated to be “onsite or near the workplace” with C-RECC providing funding support and coaching.
The effort is well underway, confirmed Emily Martens, bilingual child care marketing and recruitment coordinator with C-RECC.
“Right now, we’re working with several applicant organizations on a partnership that would utilize the $75,000 grant,” Martens said. “We’re close to getting a partnership agreement signed between the employer and the child care provider, so we’re hoping to have a contract signed this spring.”
A continuing employee need
C-RECC isn’t yet naming names of the business or child care organization. But the demand for new child care slots doesn’t appear to have abated over the last few years.
Child care availability nosedived after the start of the pandemic in March 2020 as some providers closed and never reopened. Skagit County’s announcement estimated it lost 580 slots, or 22% of capacity, during the pandemic and it had been designated a “child care desert.”
Meanwhile, parts of Whatcom County, Martens said “are still considered a child care desert and the specific factors and needs vary depending on which part of the county you’re in” with rural areas such as Deming and Blaine “in especially direct need of child care options.”
That pandemic-driven concern led to the 2020 creation of C-RECC within the Opportunity Council, in partnership with the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce. The purpose was to stabilize, retain and expand child care enterprises in the region.
Skagit County’s March announcement, in addition to previewing the employer-based child care pilot, cited other progress over the past year, including that six new providers opened their doors to restore 72 child care slots with more to come.
Martens said in Whatcom County, C-RECC has worked with funding directed by the county and the City of Bellingham to support 48 child care businesses, retain more than 2,470 child care slots and add an estimated 28 new slots since 2020. (An earlier child care series in Cascadia Daily News reported that though the number of child care slots in Whatcom County increased between 2017 and 2022, the number of providers decreased.)
The Washington State Department of Commerce made its own announcement in March of early learning grants, including several in Skagit and Whatcom counties expected to create an additional 38 child care slots in La Conner and Bellingham. One year ago, facilities in Blaine and Bellingham received similar state grants.
The business case for child care
Still, direct partnerships in either county between an employer and provider for on-site or nearby child care seem rare.
It’s not that employers don’t see the need, according to surveys and business leaders. The Winter 2024 Washington Employers Survey from the Association of Washington Business found that 14% of business owners surveyed identified “lack of child care for employees” as one of the most important challenges facing businesses.
Guy Occhiogrosso, president and CEO of the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, wrote on the chamber website in June 2021 that “the business case for child care is simple: child care allows the workforce to be employed.” Nearly three years later, he said though it isn’t “as visible as it was during the pandemic when we were in the depths of the workforce crisis,” child care is as important as ever as a business issue.
Outside of Whatcom and Skagit counties, large companies such as Boeing have offered on-site child care and others including Amazon, Microsoft and Starbucks have subsidized backup care, either currently or in the past.
Technical hurdles can discourage
Yet financial, logistical and even fairness considerations may be obstacles to more direct and intense involvement by Northwest Washington-based employers in partnering for child care.
Jamie Desmul, director of early learning for the Whatcom Family YMCA, recalled that the Y had child care agreements and partnerships with employers previously, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But that’s not the case today, with “hundreds of families” waiting for space to open.
“I know in other communities some employers pay for slots for their employees, whether they are being used at the time or not, just so they are available when the company needs them,” Desmul said. “But with our waiting lists, it seems unethical to hold slots open that aren’t being used.”
Typical child care schedules also may not work well for certain aspects and types of local employers, C-RECC’s Martens said, “like [the] non-traditional hours in many agricultural and industrial operations.”
In addition, size — or lack of it — can get in the way. “We just have a void of larger companies in Bellingham and Whatcom County,” the Chamber’s Occhiogrosso said, adding that smaller companies are spread thin. “Generally speaking, asking an HR department to take this on, they probably don’t have the capacity to do it.”
And not only can employer-based child care be expensive — for example, Martens said C-RECC encourages creating child care co-ops where more than one business offers support for a provider — it can have tax consequences.
“If a business operates an in-office child care for their workforce, the benefit shows up as taxable income for their employee,” Martens said.
Child care centers themselves are affected by the shortage and cost since they’re also businesses, even if some are not for profit.
“As someone who hires employees, it can be very frustrating to find the perfect candidate and then lose them because they can’t find or afford safe, consistent child care,” Desmul said. “It has a direct impact on our job market.”
Martens points to problems created when larger providers in the two counties have staffing shortfalls, calling it “a significant barrier to maximizing child care spaces available.”
It’s a combination of factors that Cheryl Smith, director of community engagement and outreach for the Washington State Department of Commerce, said makes child care a complicated issue to address.
“You can’t just pull a lever and make it okay because it’s a multi-dimensional problem,” Smith said.
Waiting for a spark
Overall, conversations with organizations and providers leave it unclear if the Skagit County employer pilot is the tip of a longer spear … or if the tip is it. Or what area businesses concerned about child care availability and options can do on their own, going forward.
“I think the business community could really impact the child care market by advocating,” the YMCA’s Desmul said. “Talking to state and local governments about how their ability to do business is hindered by the lack of affordable, quality child care.”
And, perhaps, wait and see what the results of this spring’s first-ever contract brings.
“We’re hoping,” Martens said, “the Skagit County pilot project will spark even more interest in employer-based child care solutions.”
Frank Catalano writes about business and related topics for CDN; reach him at frankcatalano@cascadiadaily.com.
