St. Louis seeks to solve child-care worker shortage

ST. LOUIS -- The Clinton-Peabody housing complex is home to some of the poorest, most underemployed families in St. Louis, yet it may become a nationally recognized incubator for highly trained child-care providers.

In April, a group of about 15 residents, mostly single mothers, will begin a unique federally funded apprenticeship program in early childhood education, similar to the types of programs that for decades have trained plumbers, electricians and carpenters.

The apprenticeship in child care is the first of its kind in the nation and is being touted as a model for other cities.

Advocates in the child-care community long have lamented the dearth of qualified child-care providers, particularly in poorer communities. Women mostly enter the field, and many in these neighborhoods are poor and lack training and education. They often find themselves in low-paying positions in unlicensed and unaccredited facilities with high turnover.

Participants who complete the program will get the opposite: Five weeks of intensive early-childhood teacher training, 480 hours of paid on-the-job training at licensed and accredited centers and 1 1/2 years of mentoring as they work at the centers. At the end of the process, they will receive formal certification as a Childhood Development Associate without having to attend a community college or four-year college.

That certification is considered a golden ticket into better paying child-care jobs in accredited and higher-quality child-care centers, including federally funded Head Start programs. The theory is a growing apprenticeship program eventually could flood the market with better child-care providers in the neighborhoods that need them the most.

"This is a win-win with this," said Steven Zwolak, chief executive of LUME Institute, which will provide the child-care training and mentoring for the project. "The turnover rate in child care is between 25 to 45 percent across the country. We can't find teachers with the degrees to stay and make centers with better quality."

Bonita Anderson is a Clinton-Peabody resident. As a formal community "coach," she has been recruiting other mothers to take part in the apprenticeship. She said most of the mothers in the complex cannot juggle traditional community college education with their poor finances and their need for child care, so the apprenticeship makes sense.

More than 90 percent of the 358 families in the complex in the Near Southside neighborhood off downtown are led by single women with children. More than half of the employable adults in the complex don't work. Average income for the households is $7,200, the lowest of all the city-managed, low-income housing developments, said Cheryl Lovell, executive director of the St. Louis Housing Authority.

Anderson, 34 and the mother of seven, said she has been caring for her children and those of relatives for years. She knows she has ability, but she is eager to get training and certification for employment that could lead to a career.

"It's going to give me a head start on what I don't know and what I need to know," she said.

Anderson said child-care training is attractive to the many moms living in Clinton-Peabody because child care for their own children always has been a barrier to employment. The program will help participants register their younger children for child care through the state subsidy program. There's hope they will be able to enroll them in child-care centers where they are doing their apprenticeships to reduce transportation issues, Anderson said.

The program is being supported by two federal grants. Last year, the St. Louis Housing Authority received a $3 million, four-year Jobs Plus grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop unique apprenticeship programs based out of Clinton-Peabody, one of the largest and poorest low-income housing complexes in St. Louis. That grant enabled the authority to hire community-based "coaches" such as Anderson to recruit other residents for such programs as computer programming and coding.

Lovell said early in the grant process, the residents were polled by the coaches about various job fields they would like to enter. Child care was mentioned repeatedly.

The actual child-care apprenticeship was established formally through a three-year, $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor being shared among St. Louis, Milwaukee and Detroit.

The St. Louis portion is being managed by SLATE, the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment. The agency, in turn, partnered with LUME Institute of University City which provides high quality early childhood education training.

Representatives from all three agencies said it made sense to focus the child-care apprenticeship on the families in Clinton-Peabody given the Jobs Plus grant and the stated desires of many residents interested in child care. The apprenticeship is also open to participants who are unemployed or underemployed but do not reside in the housing development.

Under the terms of the grant, the apprenticeship will be piloted in St. Louis, then replicated in Milwaukee and Detroit.

"It's a very natural fit," said Lovell of the housing authority. "We have residents that want jobs and are interested in this field because one of the main barriers for residents to be employed is the lack of child care."

Apprentices will be paid $9.50 an hour to start. Upon receiving their certificate, they can expect to earn $13 an hour. The certification also equals nine hours of college credit, which later could be applied toward earning a bachelor's degree, for further advancement in the child care field.

Zwolak said participants will likely get better training and support than in a traditional college setting because so much of their experience will be hands-on in high quality child care centers with individual mentoring. This will likely result in a smoother transition into a full-time job, he said.