“It is impossible to find child care,” says Tiffany Hall. The Asheville resident has a lot of personal experience behind that claim — she is the mother of four children, ages 2 months to 14 years.
“There is no such thing. I’m relying on different friends and family each day,” Hall continues. “Thankfully, they aren’t charging the outrageous amounts you see on Care.com and places like that. Some [providers on those platforms] are charging $15 to $20 per hour per child.”
Hall says the lack of open child care spots has gotten worse since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I called this place last week, and they said they haven’t been able to find someone to staff their infant room in two years,” she gives as an example.
According to the nonprofit Buncombe Partnership for Children, the county’s child care workforce has fallen by almost 19% since September 2019. As a result, the partnership says, nearly 900 fewer children are enrolled in licensed child care facilities now than before the pandemic.
One potential way to close the gap, suggests Rob Thompson, is to boost Buncombe’s number of home-based child care providers. He’s the director of early childhood programs at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, which commissioned a study on the subject last year.
The resulting report, “Growing Home-Based Child Care: An Important Opportunity for North Carolina,” found that the state has significantly fewer spaces in licensed HBCC facilities than do other...
Foley partner Lisa Noller, Chair of the Firm’s Litigation Department, will be speaking at the American Bar Association’s Qui Tam & Civil False Claims and Healthcare Fraud Institute in Washingt...