At Wednesday night’s Atlantic City Council meeting, Councilman Pat McCurdy sounded the alarm with regard to a shortage of child care providers in Atlantic, especially with the closing of Zion Lutheran Church’ Daycare Program being shut down effective this Friday.

Mayor Dave Jones echoed the alarm, and added the reason for why Zion’s program, with approximately 60 children, is shutting down.

McCurdy said there are three or four home providers that closed down because of COVID, and some decided to retire. There is no one that has taken their place.  Officials with Childcare Resource & Referral of Southwest Iowa (CCR&R) reports in the last two weeks, multiple childcare programs in Atlantic have closed their doors, for a variety of reasons, leaving almost 100 children without childcare. Kelsey Smith-Walhovd, local CCR&R Child Care Consultant said “The Atlantic community is lucky to have excellent childcare providers and programs. We just simply do not have enough of them to meet growing demand. One of CCR&R’s goals is to recruit and retain the childcare workforce so our community can grow and thrive.”

CCR&R will be hosting a “Child Care Ready ” series, an online recruitment event, with hopes to recruit, retain, train and support quality childcare and early education providers. CCR&R has partnered with the Iowa Women’s Foundation to provide a small $250 incentive grant to each participant who completes the series. Funding will be primarily used to pay for costs associated with the start-up of becoming a childcare home provider opening a Child Development Home business. The incentive will potentially remove the barriers associated with the costs of training, start-up materials, supplies, and other issues individuals might be facing. Core training requirements, health, and safety items will be the first priority for childcare providers. This includes: Essentials Pre-Service training, CPR/First Aid, participant support, background checks, fingerprinting, business starter-kits, and incentives.

CCR&R is looking to expand their $250 incentive grant to better serve individuals looking to start their own home business. They have partnered with the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce and Cass/Atlantic Development in their efforts. The group is asking businesses/individuals to make a monetary donation of their choice to the project to be paired with the $250 grant. This will better incentivize and recruit new childcare providers to fill an immediate need while retaining and supporting existing childcare programs currently operating. If businesses or individuals wish to make a contribution to their efforts, checks can be made out to Cass/Atlantic Development or dropped off at their office located at 14 West 6th Street, Atlantic.

The “Childcare Ready” series event is available at no cost to attendees. If you are interested in opening a Child Development Home business, email Child Care Resource & Referral of Southwest Iowa at surich@westcca.org or 712-579-9057 for more information.