Are you interested in helping create an innovative cooperative model for childcare?!
Created by Marie Van den Broeck from the Noun Project
In the United States, the parents of nearly 11 million children under the age of 5 are working, making adequate childcare a necessary human right. Locally, 56 percent of fathers and mothers in married households and roughly 53 percent of mothers and 21 percent of fathers in single-family households are in the labor force in Cincinnati. The stability and quality of the care their children receive largely depends on the stability and quality of the workforce; however, low pay, limited career advancement, and job uncertainty result in high teacher turnover. The “average Ohio child care worker makes only $10.55/hour, just slightly below the national average of $10.72/hour, making the wages of childcare workers lower than 97% of all occupations in the American economy”. Childcare expenses are also extremely taxing on blue collar workers costing in Cincinnati on average between $6,000-9,000 per year, while centers are operating on dangerously thin margins resulting in a high closure rate. All these factors result in a childcare and early learning system that is grossly inadequate for our children, families, and the teachers, leaving us in desperate need of a new model that families, teachers, and providers can shape for themselves.
It is for these very reasons that CUCI has begun investigating the possibilities of creating a multi-stakeholder cooperative (ie.worker and parent owned) in the childcare industry. We have started this work by doing a small pilot care share co-op where four families are sharing the cost of one nanny, paying a living wage and providing the kids with individualized care in a home setting. In order to look into this model more fully and think through how we could scale, we we are looking to build an organizing committee of individuals who are interested in exploring how to expand the Care Share concept and look into other innovative childcare ideas. If you are interested in being a part of a team working to create a sustainable model in childcare or be a worker-owner of a company such as this, please reach out to Ellen Vera at ellen@cincinnatiunioncoop.org.
