Child Careto the People

More than 84% of child care facilities only provide care during the traditional work day, leaving parents that work non-traditional shifts left to pay for expensive babysitters when trying to find care for their children. These parents lose huge percentages of their income on care, and are often left having to scramble when babysitters cancel at the last minute.

Child Care to the People aims to provide a low-cost, stable option for parents in shift-based work set-tings. Keeping costs low by relying on a co-op mod-el and underutilized spaces, Child Care to the People aims to allow every community to have a local child care that fits their needs.

Sarah has heard of co-ops before, but those require a large time commitment or come with hefty costs. These wouldn’t work for a Sarah or others with shift jobs. Sarah learns that CCttP works because of scale. With a higher number of parents involved, each parent can work a full time job and is only committed to co-op care for about 16 hours a week. A small membership fee covers utility costs.

Sarah is a single mom of two kids. Her restaurant job is just barely helping her make ends meet. Child care is not only a financial burden, but finding consistent care during the night shift hours she needs them is more difficult and costly than finding care during traditional hours.

While at the library with her kids, Sarah sees a sign in the children’s area, about a program called Child Care to the People happening right here in the library. Intrigued, Sarah finds more information nearby and learns about how this works. Child Care to the People has been able to make a special arrangement with the city to allow child care co-ops to use this public space when the library is closed.

This could be a good fit for her and the kids. The library is already a place that they love to go. She goes online and looks for a co-op that fits her evening work schedule. One is available but needs more participants for it to work. Sarah reaches out to a few colleagues who have also been struggling to find cheaper and more flexible care options; they too think this could be a good option.

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They sign up together, and a CCttP worker schedules a meeting for the entire cohort to meet and make sure they feel good about the arrangement, answer questions and help them set up the first few weeks of scheduling.

Sarah is glad to see that CCttP has an app that makes scheduling care hours and keeping track of other duties, like snack rotation easier.

To outfit the library with more carespace related items, CCttP gathers donated baby and educational supplies which are available for parents to “shop” as needed for their co-op’s needs.

CCttP also provides a preschool teacher to come one afternoon a week to run an educational activity and drop off lesson plans for the parents to follow the rest of the week.

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Sarah loves working at the CCttP co-op. She only has to go in 3 times a week, and when she does, it is fun to be part of her children’s learning.

Even better, she is able to stick to a more consistent work schedule, since she doesn’t have to cancel her night shifts when a babysitter cancels at the last minute.

Life is more reliable for Sarah, and with the extra money she is saving from not having to go to child care, Sarah has opened college savings funds for both of her kids. Watching them learn alongside other kids, she knows they have the potential to go very far!

CCttP continues to grow across the city, taking shape in a variety of spaces, from vacant storefronts to portables next to workplaces.

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