Updated: 5:30 p.m. with information from Dept of Human Services on the number of participating child care providers and the counties in which they’re located.

For low-wage workers in critical businesses – think grocery story clerks and nursing home aides – the offer of emergency child care may be easier said than done.

The state announced Monday it has set up an Emergency Child Care Collaborative that will match critical care workers with child care providers, and the child care will be free. The collaborative is funded by Gary Community Investments, which is run by former state Sen. Mike Johnston of Denver, as well as Centura Health and the Buell Foundation. The program is intended to assist families with critical care workers who have no other options for child care. 

However, more than half of the people of Colorado live in what’s known as a “child care desert,” where affordable child care just isn’t available.

A child care desert is defined as “a census tract with more than 50 children under age 5 that contains either no child care providers or so few options that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots,” according to the left-leaning Center for American Progress. 

Colorado’s child care deserts, according to CAP, include large swaths of southwestern and northwestern Colorado; and parts of every metro city and county along the Front Range, from Larimer to Pueblo. The lack of child care is most acute in low-income and rural communities. Latino and Native American communities are also disproportionately child care deserts, according to a 2017 CAP report. A 2017 Chalkbeat report said nine of Denver’s 78 neighborhoods are classified as child care deserts, also citing CAP data.

A 2017 Colorado Trust report said that the 80249 ZIP code, which covers parts of Aurora and northeast Denver including Green Valley Ranch, is one of the biggest child care deserts in the state.

The Department of Human Services lists 4,920 child care providers throughout the state. A search of the 80249 ZIP code showed more than two dozen grocery stores, ranging from small mom-and-pops to large chains and a dozen non-hospital nursing care facilities, but no child care facilities within a five-mile radius.

In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis said that “we know that this global pandemic is putting an unprecedented strain on Colorado’s health care and emergency workers. More than 80,000 of our emergency workers have children under age eight, and without child care, many of these workers will not be able to perform the jobs that are most crucial to containing the spread of the virus.”

The collaborative’s website acknowledges that it won’t have providers in every area. “There are still areas where we lack sufficient providers to fill all the demand,” it says, and encouraged families to keep checking as new providers are being added daily.

A longstanding problem

In 2019, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 63, which tasked the Department of Human Services with looking into the issue of declining availability of child care providers, especially for children under the age of five.

In their report to the legislature in January, DHS said that despite the state’s growing economy, licensed care for infants has been in decline since 2010, and licensed family child care homes are also less available than a few years ago. Colorado families spend 2% of their income on child care, and in minimum wage families, that can increase to as much as 66%. The state ranks 8th in the nation for the most expensive infant care.

The solutions outlined in the Human Services report includes grants for prospective and existing family child care home providers and centers serving infants in high risk communities, child care deserts, and/or those providing non-traditional hours, and to incentivize centers and family child care home providers to work on business practices.

To date, lawmakers have not introduced legislation intended to incorporate the suggestions of the 2019 report. State Rep. Bri Buentello, a Pueblo Democrat, said a bill was drafted on the issue that was supposed to be introduced in the second half of the session.

Families often spend months on waiting lists, she said. She also pointed out that child care pay doesn’t keep up with the economy.

“You can get a much better paying job” than child care, she said. 

The state Department of Human Services said 723 facilities have said they are “definitely or potentially willing to reopen for emergency services.” Those facilities are in 45 of the state’s 64 counties, including the state’s 24 most-populous counties. The outlier: Logan County, which has no participating providers yet and six confirmed cases of COVID-19.

About the collaborative

The Emergency Child Care Collaborative offers care to families of critical care workers in the following categories:

• Health care operations
• Critical infrastructure
• Critical manufacturing
• Critical retail (including grocery stores)
• Critical services (trash, mail and shipping, garment cleaning, car and bicycle repair, child care services, building cleaning, warehouse, funeral homes and in-person pastoral services)
• News media
• Financial institutions
• Providers of basic necessities to economically disadvantaged populations
• Construction
• Defense
• Critical services necessary to maintain the safety, sanitation and critical operations of residences or other critical businesses
• Vendors that provide critical services or products, including logistics and technology support, child care and services

Families who apply for the program will be matched with a licensed child care provider, which could include licensed in-home care, a center-based program, services in a school-based program and on-demand child care. 

According to the website, “to date, the response has been strong; it is clear that the child care community wants to do what they can to help.”

Once a family’s application has been approved, the website says, the family will be given access to an online platform or web application, where they can describe the care they need. That information is then broadcast via text message to eligible providers who have slots available in the appropriate age group. The provider can then text the family and make arrangements for enrollment.

Families who already have child care through a licensed provider and who qualify as critical care workers may be able to continue using that provider, although it isn’t guaranteed, the website says.