Cherokee County addressing need for child care

CHEROKEE, Iowa (KCAU) – In Cherokee County, more than 90% of families have all parents in the workforce, but 65% of the parents had to miss work, come in late or leave early due to challenges with child care.

“If you don’t have children that are in the child care system,” Cherokee County economic development director Bill Anderson said, “you may not be aware that we have a deficit of over 1,000 slots here in Cherokee County, which I think is eye opening to anyone.”

Back in November, the Cherokee Regional Medical Center contacted First Children’s Finance to address the lack of child care in Cherokee County. It’s a problem a lot of parents are facing.

“That’s sort of the reality across Iowa and really even outside the state of Iowa right now,” First Children’s Finance business development manager Angie Duncan said. “A lot of places across the country are struggling to have enough child care supply for parents that want to put their child in care, especially to go to work.”

As one of the largest employers in the county, Cherokee Regional Medical Center sees the issue firsthand when their employees have to quit work due to a lack of child care resources.

“A lot of times, we get those employees back as those kids get a little older, but that also disrupts our business as well,” CEO Gary Jordan said. “So we’re trying to figure out how to kind of support our employees and other people in the community to make sure that they can stay in the workforce.”

Now the county has a strategic plan that will hopefully create more child care spaces and potentially bring growth to the community.

“If we’re able to take this blueprint, move forward and at least try to meet some of the demand,” Anderson said, “when bigger, when larger employers are coming to us, or when potential future employers are coming to us, we can say we’re working on housing, we’re working on child care.”

But creating more than 1,000 spaces for the children of Cherokee will be a long term plan.

“This will take some time,” Duncan said. “This isn’t going to be a quick overnight solution. There are some things that can happen immediately, some small steps to start to make sure some of these actions take place.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to SiouxlandProud | Sioux City, IA | News, Weather, and Sports.