Can Real-Time State Data Ease Parents’ Child-Care Woes?

With a new real-time data dashboard, state leaders in Iowa hope to revolutionize the search for child care. The new technology is coming at a time when parents in the state have expressed that a lack of options is having a widespread economic impact.

“We continually hear, ‘We don’t have child care, I can’t find child care,’ and businesses, economic development and communities are constantly hearing that they’re losing their workforce. They can’t retain or even hire a workforce because the parents cannot find child care,” said Tami Foley, program planner for the Division of Family Well-Being and Protection in the Iowa Child Care Bureau.
In 2021, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office reported that child-care shortages were costing the state’s economy about $935 million a year. In response, the governor established a child-care task force, and that group advised that the state needed a digital way to connect providers, the state and the community.

The new Iowa Child Care Connect tool launched last month as a response to that suggestion. The solution presents data with three different interactive tools:

• Child-care search: a filterable search tool paired with a mapping function that allows families to search for care providers in their area or along a designated route
• Vacancy dashboard: real-time data including current child-care openings by age, geography and quality
• Supply and demand dashboard: leverages state data to estimate child-care needs versus availability, highlighting geographic and or age group needs

The intention behind the interactive tool was to empower parents, providers and policymakers to make data-driven decisions, while aiming to address the ongoing child-care crisis and improve access to quality care. The data is in depth, and the tool combines information about operational capacity and then uses data on actual children and parent choice and options to give a better idea of what the supply and demand actually looks like on a daily basis.

“This can tell us what we need to do as a community to adjust slots, make sure that we’re serving all populations,” said Ryan Page, director of child care at the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “We have an opportunity for a lot of really good data-driven decision-making.” 

OVERCOMING TECHNICAL RED TAPE

Iowa leaders believe they’re the first state to offer real-time child-care data dashboards, and say there was quite a bit of work on the back end to get it together. However, they also added that the process has been fairly smooth thanks to a few factors that made everything easier, like including stakeholders in the planning early on.

Iowa HHS, in partnership with Iowa State University and Resultant, a data and technology consulting firm, developed Iowa Child Care Connect.
First they worked with vendors to set up a connection between child-care management systems used in the state and the child-care subsidy program. They also added features such as a QR code that allows parents who have been awarded child-care assistance funding to scan their children in and out of the program for the day, bypassing the previous steps that required providers to spend hours each week manually entering data. 

They also collect data from child-care businesses through monthly forms, asking for current information about vacancy rates. According to Foley, participation is currently sitting at about 50 percent and they’re hoping that number will increase with awareness about the dashboard. 

“We did offer an incentive, a really small incentive, for those child-care businesses to complete that form,” said Foley, adding that they will send reminders each week to providers who haven’t completed the form yet.

Before this fall’s launch, the state started marketing the tool to child-care businesses, and then to stakeholders across the state as well as community action agencies and foundations. 

They also had a stroke of luck when it came to breaking down potential data silos — due to an existing partnership with Iowa State University on a different project, they already had a contractual data sharing agreement in place, which helped remove any red tape that could have caused a roadblock. 

“Some technology projects can go south real easily, and they’re not fun. But this one has been fantastic, I think because there was buy-in even from our security and privacy office,” said Foley.

She brought experts in from the very beginning, as well as the state department attorney to help better understand the data sharing process. They were able to reach out whenever they needed and would share updates.

“They were also excited about it,” she said.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Now that Iowa Child Care Connect has officially launched, state officials say it’s just the start of an initiative to use data to create dramatic change in the long-term child-care landscape for the state.

“What this really will be able to do — if we know someplace is a legitimate desert, we don’t have enough child-care access in an area, we’re going to know where to target those limited funds we have available to grants and contracts. Not only at the state level are we going to be able to make those data-driven decisions, but at the local level as well,” said Page. 

Additionally, the state hopes the new tools will support local child-care business owners by giving them the power to increase their visibility, essentially serving as a free marketing tool. 

“I think this is going to be even more utilized than people think,” said Foley. “Child-care businesses don’t really get into the business of child care because they want to be an entrepreneur or business owner. It’s usually because they love children, but to utilize data to really understand and promote their business, I think there’s some great opportunities.” 

The creation of the new dashboards cost about $5.3 million, with an ongoing maintenance cost of about a half a million a year to continue to support Iowa Child Care Connect.