State Funds Initiate Creation of Dubuque County Child Care Solutions Fund

Greater Dubuque Development Corporation, Dubuque Initiatives and Child Care Resource & Referral of Northeast Iowa have secured a grant from the State of Iowa to administer a comprehensive wage enhancement program available to all Dubuque County licensed child care centers that have child care assistance agreements with the State of Iowa. Up to $560,000 in State grant funds are designated to Dubuque County to be matched with $280,000 in local dollars from Greater Dubuque area employers. The final grant award will be determined by the dollars raised locally and will be used to create a new Dubuque County Child Care Solutions Fund.

Child care is a critical part of our community’s soft infrastructure as the availability of child care has a major impact on overall workforce participation. Employers have made it clear to Greater Dubuque Development that child care remains a challenge for their workforce; one of the top three challenges to increasing workforce over the past 5 years. Integral to improving the quality, affordability, and availability of child care is the acute need to attract and retain more child care professionals.

Greater Dubuque Development Corporation, the City of Dubuque, DRA, and Dubuque County have offered tuition support for relevant child care professional certifications, provides child care during classes, and for up to a year of upon employment after receiving a certificate through the Opportunity Dubuque program. Despite these ongoing efforts to increase child care workforce, we have seen approximately a 23% decrease in early child care professionals over the last 5 years.

The new Dubuque County Child Care Solutions Fund seeks to change this trend.  With this new program, providers can implement a series of innovative recruitment and retention efforts such as increasing child care professional starting wages to the level that child care professional would receive after their first 6 months when they have completed all of their required DHS training. The additional hourly wage over that training period would be reimbursed to the provider through the child care solutions fund. Coupled with the continued availability of the $1,000 Child Care Professional Attraction Grant and the State of Iowa’s Child Care Assistance provided to full-time child care professionals, Dubuque County has a unique comprehensive set of programs to address our child care availability challenges.

For this effort to be successful, local employers are needed to come to the table as Business Champions of Child Care to leverage the full $560,000 in State grant funds are designated to Dubuque County. Greater Dubuque Development, in collaboration with Dubuque Initiatives, has began and will continue to reach out to area employers through the coming months to pledge to be a Business Champion of Child Care.

Thanks to the partnership between Greater Dubuque Development Corporation, Dubuque Initiatives and Child Care Resource & Referral, with support from the State of Iowa, Dubuque County will stand out as a place with ample, affordable, quality child care options so that YOU can be great here because of world-class child care.