Boot camps, business accelerators: Rapid City, Sioux Falls get creative with child care grants • South Dakota Searchlight

South Dakota’s two largest cities are creatively spending child care grants awarded by the state, with uses including boot camps for providers and the hiring of a child care entrepreneur-in-residence.

Both communities face a shortage of available child care slots and struggle with affordable child care options for families, which can cost economic productivity and force family members out of the workforce.

Rapid City and Sioux Falls are two of 13 communities awarded a child care grant from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development last month. In total, the grants, using federal funds, are infusing over $3.7 million into helping communities find collaborative, innovative solutions to address child care needs across South Dakota.

The initiatives range from improving the child care workforce to creating after-school programs and supporting existing providers with continued education.

“We want to see a better quality of life for everyone in our community,” said Brienne Maner, executive director with Start Up Sioux Falls. “This crisis is affecting everyone directly and indirectly. I want to see better support for our kids. I want to see our parents, especially our mothers, be able to confidently go back into the workforce knowing they’re making a difference and getting ahead financially — and that putting their child in day care won’t break them.”

Startup Sioux Falls is partnering with the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, Helpline Center and Lutheran Social Services to launch a small business accelerator program tailored for child care providers and to fund a child care entrepreneur-in-residence to help support providers in the metro area, Maner said. Lutheran Social Services will start its own child care development program for underserved communities in Sioux Falls — such as Spanish-speaking, multilingual, refugee or immigrant families.

The state awarded the Sioux Falls collaboration just under $285,000, Maner said.

“Child care workers don’t always identify as a small business owner, therefore they’re not necessarily seeking the same resources other small businesses and entrepreneurs are,” Maner said. “We’re looking at this as a more economic approach. We’re providing tools for success and creating a community of individuals who can help support each other as they move forward.”

Elevate Rapid City will host a series of child care provider boot camps throughout the Black Hills area this year with most of its $255,000 grant, said Laura Jones, the nonprofit’s housing and community development manager.

The boot camps will cover basics such as branding and marketing, accounting best practices, and requirements and benefits in becoming a licensed provider with the state, Jones said. Another piece of the grant will be used for subgrants to help existing providers expand their facilities to become licensed with the state.

“Our secondary goal of our overall grant is to get more in-home providers to register with the state,” Jones said. “We have no idea how many unlicensed providers are out there, and there’s no way to know how many spots are being covered by unregistered providers.”

Both Jones and Maner said providers in their communities are interested in long-term policy solutions in addition to the one-time pot of cash from the state.

“This problem isn’t going to be fixed at the local level, but we’re doing what we can and deploying the resources we have to help our community from within,” Maner said, adding that providers would benefit from financial support at a national level. “It’s in our economy’s best interest to take a hard look at how we’re prioritizing child care when it comes to workforce and public health and all these sorts of things. I hope our state leadership is listening and will be a good advocate for us in Washington, D.C.”