Governments are investing in workforce development as they prepare for the forthcoming “silver tsunami” — a predicted exodus of baby boomers from the workforce. The child-care workforce is one of the worst compensated in America, with nearly 15 percent of child-care staff nationwide living below the poverty line.
The $30 million voter-approved investment is funding $24 million in direct compensation for these essential workers through 2027. The pilot is expected to benefit about 1,400 child-care workers — including staff in centers, home-based family child care and school-age programs.
The endeavor has received 2,000 facility applications in its first year, and wage boosts have been implemented across hundreds of organizations. Workers received payment within 1.7 days of program enrollment on average, early data revealed.
The aim is to distribute public dollars and create an understanding of the impact of that workforce investment, according to Kalayaan Domingo, the county’s program manager on the project.
“So, bringing on a tech partner helped us to be able to create the infrastructure needed to implement this pilot and to manage the public dollars responsibly, and to ensure that we were able to integrate in our equity goals within the pilot implementation in a way that was effective and consistent,” Domingo said. The real-time tracking capabilities enabled through dashboards, she said, have been “huge.”
Several partners have supported this pilot. AidKit, a company that offers a platform built for equitable aid delivery, helped the county administer the funds through the development of the application portal. The Imagine Institute, a workforce intermediary, helped lead outreach and host informational sessions. Uncommon Bridges, a consulting group, helped facilitate communication between partners and members of the community. The Urban Institute, a national research organization, is independently evaluating the pilot.
Technology’s role in this pilot ranges from supporting the county’s responsible administration of these taxpayer dollars to tracking the demographics and metrics of pilot participants to help officials understand its reach.
AidKit also helped the county implement a lottery-style selection process to ensure funding was equitably distributed across the workforce. King County is a large and diverse local government made up of urban, rural and suburban communities — even including islands — and nearly 2.3 million residents.
Community input from child-care workers underlined the need for all types of child-care workers to be included in the pilot, regardless of where they worked. So, the lottery included distribution by geography and across child-care facility types.
“So, we created this lottery to ensure that facilities across the county were able to receive the information, were able to apply, and then had a fair chance,” Domingo said. The county essentially held 27 mini lotteries, three in each geographic region for the different types of child-care operations.
This lottery-style funding distribution process is something AidKit does frequently for government partners, its CEO Brittany Christenson said. Because governments are using taxpayer funds, “you have to make sure that you're distributing them in a way that brings that money back into the communities” in an equitable way, she said.
A unique component of this pilot, Christenson said, is its community-centric design, which has engaged the child-care workforce throughout the process.
The program’s impact is being measured by the Urban Institute in partnership with Cardea Services. The two are conducting a mixed-method study looking at continuity of care and worker retention at the facility level. There will also be an assessment of the impact at the worker level through surveys, focus groups and interviews, to understand the “holistic impact” of the wages, Domingo said. A baseline survey launched with the applications, and more than 1,000 child-care workers completed it. That survey revealed a deep commitment to the child-care workforce and high job satisfaction, but strains around financial well-being.
As one child-care worker’s survey response emphasized, improving financial stability enables workers “to be more present, focused, and emotionally available for the children and families we serve.”
The pilot intends to inform and influence local — and even state — policy to encourage increased public investment in the child-care sector.
“We believe that child care is a public good and should be funded as such,” Domingo said, “and we want to continue to amplify our learnings to really build that vision.”
Since its launch earlier this year, 133 facilities were able to be enrolled through the lottery process. Now, “900 and counting” workers have been enrolled to receive quarterly payments, Domingo said. The payments are intended to reflect a $4 an hour increase per person.
For other governments looking to replicate the wage boost model, Christenson said, understanding the makeup of providers in their community and the needs of those workers is a good place to start.
