Employers’ Child Care Alliance

Description

In the business world, companies usually compete against one another. But in Lee County, Alabama, companies work together to improve the quality of child care for their workers and the community. In 1994, a group of employers who were interested in helping their employees find high quality child care started the Employers’ Child Care Alliance (ECCA). Although Alliance member employees benefit the most from the programs offered by ECCA, community members also use program services.

Members of the Alliance are:

• Auburn Bank;
• Auburn University;
• Auburn Hotel and Conference Center;
• Briggs & Stratton Corporation;
• The Cities of Auburn and Opelika;
• Craftmaster Printers;
• East Alabama Medical Center;
• East Alabama Mental Health/MR;
• Employment Resources Corporation;
• Quantegy Corporation;
• Southern Union St. Community College;
• Uniroyal Goodrich Corporation;
• Vermont American Corporation; and
• The Child Care Resource Center, Inc.

In 1994, a small group of business leaders sponsored a symposium on family-friendly benefits with the assistance of the local Chambers of Commerce in Lee County, Alabama. This rural county, which borders the state of Georgia, was a good place to do business. The county had a strong industrial base and the larger cities of Montgomery, Alabama and Columbus, Georgia were short trips down the highway. There were excellent schools, a major land grant university in Auburn, and a thriving community college in Opelika. But, like many communities across the country, working families expressed a need for high quality care.

After the symposium, four human resource managers began meeting regularly to discuss child care needs. It didn’t take long for them to decide that by working together, local companies could help meet the needs of working families. Within a few months, the group wrote a mission statement, and the Employers’ Child Care Alliance was born. A survey by the Alliance identified the problems and needs of employees. Based on the survey and with the assistance of the Child Care Resource Center, the ECCA developed action plans to address specific problems related to child care availability and quality and information for families.

The employer group has grown from the original 4 to 17 members who employ some 12,000 workers. The Child Care Resource Center in Opelika houses the office of the Alliance and provides administrative support.

The Employers’ Child Care Alliance has four main activities:

Enhanced Resource and Referral. Employees of member companies receive referrals and relevant information to meet their child care needs. Although this service was created for Alliance employees, the entire community can access it. The many early successes of the resource and referral service are due to the close working relationship with the already established local Child Care Resource Center. In addition to resource information and referrals, the Alliance has started to provide consumer education about the importance of quality in child care.

Quality Enhancement Partnership. Two separate activities in training and accreditation improve the level of staff training and overall quality of child care centers. The first activity matches child care centers with employers who provide scholarships to support the training of center staff. Child care providers have completed 4,000 hours of training since the Alliance was formed.

The second activity is a unique program called STEPS to Accreditation. This program, designed and piloted in 1998 by the ECCA, assists centers in achieving incremental STEPS in the process of accreditation. It is a comprehensive system of training, support, and guidance that raises the quality of centers beyond what is required by state licensing requirements. This assistance is completely voluntary, but 11 centers are currently participating, which is almost half of the centers in the county. As a part of this program, center directors participate in regular training sessions, which also serve as forums for discussion and professional support.

Bridges. The Bridges program was established to address the needs of 10 to 14-year-olds. The program provides both after-school and summer programming. Children of Alliance members have priority in programs that take place in a wide variety of locations, including churches, Boys and Girls clubs, and parks and recreation facilities. This program has been extremely successful, and other areas around the state have expressed an interest in replicating the program.

Non-Standard Child Care. Dealing with 24-hour, sick, and emergency child care has been the most challenging aspect of the Alliance’s work. In response to a need expressed by ECCA families, a private management corporation opened a 24-hour center. The center was closed after six months because the demand for child care during second and third shifts was insufficient. So, the Alliance continues to try other approaches. In addition to recruiting additional family child care providers to provide non-standard care, the ECCA is developing unique solutions to some of the barriers. Home providers that take care of children during non-standard hours have more children for the two or three hours when the work shift changes. Home providers can only care for six children, so they are limited to this maximum for these few hours. ECCA is helping to recruit providers to become licensed as group homes to care for up to 12 children, and to employ Americorps members or college work-study students as the extra staff person that is required when more than six children are in attendance.

The annual budget of the Alliance is $98,000, with member employers contributing 75-80% of the funds. There is no minimum contribution to join the Alliance, but this may change in the future.

Other organizations that have supported the Alliance include:

• The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs;
• Child Care Resource Center through the State of Alabama Quality Improvement funds;
• The Alabama Civil Justice Foundation; and
• The Points of Light Foundation.

The Alliance also receives support from the Americorps program and the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.

Although the Alliance does not have a formal evaluation process, it has seen concrete results in individual programs. The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies conducted a site visit of the Bridges program and gave it a very positive review; the summer program was filled and had a waiting list. Parents using the resource and referral service are surveyed biannually, and feedback is very positive.

For the Quality Enhancement Partnership, objective data is reported regularly and compared to stated goals: total number of training hours sponsored, centers participating in STEPS and progression, and the number of teachers receiving the Child Development Associate credential. Also, center directors help by providing regular input through a systematic process about what works and what does not. And Alliance partners meet monthly to analyze this information and staff reports, and to make needed adjustments to project goals or implementation procedures.

The acclaimed Bridges Program will be replicated around the state due to a partnership grant from the Alabama Civil Justice Foundation, the Corporate Foundation for Children, and the Points of Light Foundation. This support will enable the Alliance to provide the technical assistance and materials to "fast track" other communities in the development of these much-needed programs.

The Alliance is always looking for new partners to sustain its mission. To develop its membership base, the partnership encourages its members to recruit other businesses. Since the membership has grown since the formation of the Alliance, the governance structure, which is currently very loose, is under review. ECCA hopes to formulate a structure that will allow the partnership to deal with problems and disagreements should they arise.

Planning takes time, but pays off. The Alliance planned for two years before hiring a manager. The extensive planning kept mistakes to a minimum. The mistakes that were made were easy to correct and useful learning experiences.

Keep members actively involved. Make sure that employer members stay involved with the partnership. Encourage employers to provide input and advice, not just funding. This leads to long-term commitment.

Start at the top. Get chief executive officers involved in the partnership from the beginning. The original Alliance members were largely human resource managers, which has made it more difficult to engage the CEOs in the project. It is important to have the people who make the decisions participate in planning discussions.

It is best to give and receive. Understand from the beginning that the best partnerships are those in which all members participate throughout the entire partnership, all giving and receiving in return. This reciprocity includes not only providing funds and receiving goods and services, but also engaging in the ongoing exchange of information, and sharing of successes and challenges.