The Greater Fox Valley Child Care Alliance is a network of partners across NE Wisconsin (from Greater Green Bay to Oshkosh) working to make it easier for children ages birth to 5 and their families to get the high-quality, affordable early care and education (ECE) and family supports they need to thrive.
With this newsletter we aim to educate and inform our communities about the need to transform early care and education in ways that will bring about more equitable and lasting outcomes for children and families across the region and to spark opportunities for action, alignment and coordination.
This month you’ll find:
OPPORTUNITIES TO ENGAGE & LEARN:
- The Role of Funders in Strategic Public Financing
- Who is Providing for Providers, Part 3 Rapid Survey
LOCAL NEWS:
- Outagamie County awards ARPA grants
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel News Lab series on child care
- WHBY “Focus Fox Valley” discussion on child care crisis
- Wall Street Journal highlights WI provider insight
Opportunities to Engage & Learn
The Role of Funders in Strategic Public Financing, Children’s Funding Project, August 2023
Read more about the work being done nationally to re-envision funding models for a sustainable and thriving child care system.
“If we want to scale the programs and services that all children need over time, we need to think of them as a public good, sustained by public investments. This opens philanthropy up to focus strategic investments in things like innovation, evaluation, and capacity building rather than paying for direct services year after year.”
Who is Providing for Providers, Part 3 Rapid Survey, September, 2023
Since March 2021, The Stanford Center on Early Childhood Rapid Survey has gathered data from child care providers across the U.S. to track working conditions and experiences. Who is Providing for Providers? Part 3 illuminates conditions and concerns of providers that are often poorly understood by the public. To best serve children’s needs in non-custodial care situations, it is essential to strengthen, value, and compensate providers in a fair and just manner.
Read About Who is Providing for Providers
The Child Care Alliance continues to support efforts to increase wages and benefits for child care workers in the region. Child care compensation has emerged as a central issue driving the lack of enough child care openings in the region to meet demand. Children and families in need of care rely on this essential workforce. Please let us know if you would like to connect in this work through the Three Action Teams. To learn more about the strategic action teams, click the link below.
Learn More About the Strategic Action Teams
Local News
Outagamie County recently awarded $2.75 million in American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) grants to First 5 Fox Valley and Child Care Resource & Referral to establish a Family Resource Center and to develop an essential shared services system for Outagamie County residents.
Click the link below to learn more and view the Appleton Post Crescent article.
Read the Appleton Post Crescent
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Ideas Lab, with support from the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation and the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, continues to provide in-depth coverage and insight into the child care crisis. Regional voices were highlighted in a statewide special report insert on September 17, 2023. You can read a guest column by Suzanne Brault and Julie Keller, Executive Director of the Women’s Fund for the Fox Valley Region here Affordable daycare necessity for women who are sole wage earners (postcrescent.com) and access the entire insert collection by clicking the link below.
Read the Milwaukee Journal Collection
WHBY-AM 1150 radio show “Focus Fox Valley” featured Julie Stoffel with Cradle to Crayons Early Learning Center & Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, Julie Keller, Executive Director of the Women’s Fund and Suzanne Brault, in a conversation with Hayley Tenpas. You can listen to the recording where they discuss why childcare nationwide and locally is a crisis including lack of openings, cost, staffing shortage, and low wages for childcare workers. Check out the August 29 episode at 36:25 to learn more.
The Wall Street Journal, featured local WI provider, Julie Stoffel, Owner of Cradle to Crayons in a recent national story regarding the importance of funding to ongoing delivery of care.
Read the The Wall Street Journal
Check out our refreshed Greater Fox Valley Child Care Alliance flyers, please feel free to share. Good news, we are excited to be working on a webpage housed within the Basic Needs Giving Partnership, these flyers and other resources will be linked soon, stay tuned! Also, please consider joining one of our strategic Action Teams. Click the links below for more.
Download Our “Who We Are” Flyer
