INDIANAPOLIS — Access to childcare continues to be an issue across the country as well as right here in Indiana. For lower income families finding affordable care is even more difficult. The Villages of Indiana celebrated opening 16 more slots for infant care on Tuesday, but those slots are already spoken for due a long waitlist.
"Unfortunately, here at the Children’s Villages we have over 200 families in this neighborhood who are on wait list who are waiting desperately to find a slot for their child in a high-quality affordable daycare,” Shannon Schumacher the CEO the Villages of Indiana said.
The Villages of Indiana’s childcare facility has been open since 2000. Rhyse Stallsworth’s mother used the Villages childcare when she was a baby. Now at 24, Rhyse found herself in need of childcare for her son Jax. She knows just how nerve-racking being on a waiting list can be.
"I actually got on the waiting list I think while I might have still been pregnant,” Stallsworth said. “So, I mean I was on the waiting list for a while."
That is reality for families across the state of Indiana. The Villages of Indiana says they serve around 10,000 people a year and adds more than half of the people in the state live in a childcare desert. A childcare desert is defined as there being three and a half times as many children under the age of five then there are licensed childcare slots.
"It was hard,” Makayla Richardson, a mother who uses the Villages daycare said. “I got denied at a lot of places and I couldn't afford a lot of places. Here I was able to get in to Head Start."
Head Start is a program that assists low-income families with early childhood education. However, not all Hoosiers meet the income requirements.
“If you pay the full fee here at our center, for an infant, it's 359 dollars a week,” Schumacher said. “I don't know too many people who can really afford that."
That's why The Villages of Indiana says the state could take steps to make assistance available to more Hoosier families.
"Those childcare vouchers are so, so important, “Schumacher said. “But they are only limited to people who are 150 percent of the federal poverty level so that's a huge number of families who can't get access to this high-quality daycare."
Quality, the moms that were in attendance on Tuesday say they are grateful to have.
"It's insane finding something nearby your home or somewhere that you feel like you want to go,” Richardson said.
The Villages of Indiana says they are still working on hiring the needed staff. Since they are a high-quality day care, they have to have one daycare worker for every four children in their care.
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