“Now that I’m doing childcare, I see so many obstacles as a provider, but also as a parent.”

Alescia Harris, from Toledo, has five children (ages 5-26), one granddaughter, and runs her own daycare center.

Her unique perspective of being on both ends of the current childcare crisis, as provider and parent, highlights the need for increasing childcare services, and the danger of the current government push to end parent telework options.

The CEO  (Care Economy Organizing) Project of Ohio, an advocate for early childhood education and care, works with parents and childcare providers and teachers (like Harris) to support and unite them in fighting for our children’s rights to quality care and education.

“I was introduced to The CEO Project through one of their members,” Harris said. “I attended their meetings and trainings, and truthfully, every time I go to one of these events, even if it’s just a zoom meeting, I leave feeling empowered.” The CEO Project is “kind of like the unions that childcare workers often don’t have,” Harris said.

“They keep us informed on what’s going on with childcare currently, what obstacles we may be faced with, what they want us to get together, how to get more people involved. They enlist everyone. This group is like a sisterhood where they encourage you, give you information and advice, you have questions, they make sure you leave there with clear concise answers.”

Quality, accessible childcare faces attacks from many levels. Federally, president Trump wants to mandate that federal employees return to the office full-time. Some non-federal employers also want to end remote and hybrid options.

To support parents returning to on-site, full-time work, more childcare slots must be made available. But with so many daycare providers and teachers leaving the workplace in droves, the opposite is occurring.

Without proper pay, benefits or structural support, the childcare crisis will only increase.

Harris has seen firsthand how structural difficulties have impacted her ability to provide care.

“There’s insufficient compensation. Many providers struggle with low reimbursement rates for kids, which means they can’t even cover supplies, let alone the cost to run a center,” she said.

RELATED: Education Opportunities in the Toledo Area

Harris lists some of the obstacles: the government wants the staff to have degrees and do extended training, but they’re not giving them any benefits. Daycare providers often don’t have medical benefits or 401Ks, and the government isn’t expanding those options. “To retain staff, you want them to do all this training and get all this credentialing, but are they getting loan forgiveness?” Harris said. “They’re not acting like they’re partnering with us, they’re policing us.”

She describes system changes that don’t respect the work that providers do, like moving from a 5 star rating system where providers did a lot of work in developing curriculum and lesson plans to get their stars. When Ohio abruptly decided to change the ratings system, the providers lost all their stars without anything commensurate as replacement, and felt like it negated all their hard work.

“Changing the ratings system affects whether a child can continue in the program they’re already enrolled in, and how it affects a younger sibling coming into the system,” said Harris.

Harris noted that recent legislative changes introduced new requirements for providers, but there’s lack of clear and acceptable information on how to comply with the new information, and this means providers and parents will face disruptions to services.

“The people who are supposed to be in charge, with inspections or licensing or their roles, it doesn’t seem like they want to help the provider,” said Harris. “It’s policing. They’ll mark you for any and every little thing.” She hastens to add that rules are rules, and she absolutely gets that. But when licensing specialists tell her, “I have to mark you down for something or my bosses will think I’m not doing my job,” she finds that discouraging.

There are wider systemic issues that can play into parents being able to access quality childcare, like an overloaded medical system. “I’ve had to take my kids out of county to get dental care because the place in my county was booked up for the whole year,” said Harris. “One of the requirements for Head Start, a high quality childcare program, is that your child has to go to the dentist. My child had to get all their cleanings out of county. I wonder, is this why people aren’t sending their children to Head Start? Is this why some of the children I’m servicing have cavities and rotten teeth?”

Harris works another job because owning her own childcare center doesn’t pay enough to support her family. So, she decided to create a daycare that covers the difficult 6pm-6am hours for parents.

Her daycare is in-home, and she noted that once she received a negative mark from an inspector because her own child had some lotion marks on his clothing. “My child has eczema and needs to lotion his skin,” she said. Why aren’t the licensing inspectors trying to help the providers who are wanting to make a difference, she asks? Why isn’t it based on providing resources that they need, rather than just marking down the flaws? The inspectors often make her feel like she’s failing or needing to be on edge.

Many daycare providers are women, and Harris feels that The CEO Project really focuses on pushing women empowerment for the parents and providers involved. She has experienced the struggle firsthand of finding quality childcare when she was returning to work fulltime after the pandemic. Her child’s first daycare would send home her kid with no clothes on — just a diaper–and her kid would get very bad rashes. “As a parent, you have to go to work, but you love your children and don’t want to leave them somewhere that’s not safe,” she said.

For parents stressed about finding good childcare, Harris recommends looking at daycares like an interview. “If it’s in-home, inspect the home, speak with the provider, don’t just drop your kiddo off with anyone. Ask the provider, ‘What type of other children do you have? What do you feed the children? What are your extra curriculars? What are your activities?’ Everyone in the home is supposed to have a fingerprint and background check. Bond and talk with your provider.”

For providers, Harris urges them to remember why they got into this field in the first place. “At the end of the day, we’re making a difference in that child’s life. That child is gonna pick up on some of our positive ways. They’re gonna mimic us, they’re gonna remember us, they’re gonna think, ‘I went to daycare and we ate that delicious meal and my teacher didn’t care how much I wanted — I got full.”’

Connect with grassroots groups like The CEO Project, who believe in treating daycare providers and teachers with respect and value, and want to make sure parents have the quality childcare they and their children deserve.

“At the end of the day, I really wish that everybody would realize it’s a full circle,” Harris said. “We all need each other. We need the parents to be on the same focus as the providers to make this a better system. We’re all together, fighting for childcare as a whole, so that the parents CAN go to work and have all their benefits. If we don’t stand together, then we’ll all fall. We need to stick together.”