A state grant program to help childcare centers get up and running has been inundated with applicants since going live.
Currently, a third of the state lives in a childcare desert. That’s when more than 50 small children live in an area with low or no childcare. It’s even higher for rural and low-income families, up to 45% for those demographics.
Micah Richardson with the Wyoming Women’s Foundation said the state’s Childcare Interagency Working Group had to lengthen the grant application window. Originally, they planned to take applications every other month starting with January.
“I think on day three, [we] had seven applications already. We were just starting to see that, boy, there were a few coming in, a few more than we thought,” Richardson said.
By the end of that first month, they had 47 applicants and realized they would need to adjust their plan to give childcare providers more opportunities to apply. The plan was to skip April, but now Richardson said they are opting to keep the grant window open until the end of April.
“We know that there is a need,” she said. “We know what it feels like to be parents to have care and then to suddenly not have care. We also know that there are folks out there who want to support these kiddos and these families. But the model of childcare makes it difficult to make ends meet.”
All applicants also receive information and mentoring about how to start and run childcare businesses.
”Whether or not we provide funding to you, if you have applied for this application for this grant, we are putting you in touch with business services [like] the Wyoming Business Council [or] the Wyoming Women's Business Center to help support that business side of things,” Richardson said.
She said the funds can be used in a variety of ways to help childcare providers get off the ground.
”Whether it's some slight remodeling to make things appropriate for DFS [Department of Family Services] and meet standards, or materials that you need. Maybe it's to fix a deck or fencing or something that allows for a childcare center to be in place and get moving,” she said. “These aren't huge grants. They cap out at $10,000, but they are, we hope, enough to kind of spur something.”
The application can be accessed here.
