HURON, S.D. (KELO) — The child care shortage is a growing issue, not only in South Dakota, but across the nation. Austin and Jessica Sheridan had been taking their daughter to the same in-home day care for about two years when they got bad news. SD child care taskforce unveils study "Late winter or spring in 2024, she let us know she was going to be closing her day care," Jessica Sheridan said. The trend was affecting more than just the Sheridan family. "Six closed in a very short time period. It left a lot of parents to like, what are we going to do? There's six closing, where are we going to send our kids?" Austin Sheridan said. It's an issue that the city is well aware of. For years, day care was identified as the No. 1 critical issue in the Huron. "The day care situation has been very – what's the word I want to use? Nonexistent. We have had day care providers, but it's a very difficult profession," Huron Community Foundation Board member Rhonda Kludt said. Sara Waldner also lost her child's day care provider. "She messaged us and said she's closing at the end of summer. I was absolutely devastated. I was literally heartbroken. I could not sleep that night," Co-Director Little Blossom Learning Center Sara Waldner said. So, Waldner wrote a business plan for a day care and brought it to the city the next day. The city said she needed to connect with Rhonda Kludt. "I messaged her and I said it was five words. I said, 'I want to start a day care center,' and she responded, 'Yes, yes, yes, yes, I know the perfect person who's going to be your partner'," Waldner said. Meet Whitney Reimer. She'd run an in-home day care for 11 years and had been on Kludt's radar for a while. "Reached out to her previously, before COVID probably, about opening a day care center somewhere and just telling her I was interested, but not really knowing where I would go," Co-Director Little Blossom Learning Center Whitney Reimer said. "We met and we kind of talked about what this could look like and how this could look like as co-directors. Both of us desire that time with our family and not being tied to our work 70 hours a week," Waldner said. "They just clicked and off it went. They've been just a dynamic duo, as if they had known each other all along. As I said, the stars just aligned beautifully with this program," Kludt said. All the stars were aligning, except they still needed to find a building to house the day care. That's how Faith Alive Community Church came into the picture, which was dealing with a shortage of kids in its preschool. "I talked to Rhonda and she's very well backgrounded in child care and child development. And our pastor, Jared Cass and myself asked if she would meet with us on a Saturday down here at our church to talk about our preschool," Faith Alive Community Church member, Bryan Smith said. "They wanted to ask Rhonda how to improve their preschool– while she was in day care mode. And she invited us to the meeting. And so I went to the meeting and I looked at the rooms, which were preschool rooms over there, and I said, 'this hallway is exactly what we need'," Waldner said. While Waldner and Reimer immediately saw this as the perfect location for the day care, people at the church didn't realize that's why the women attended that meeting. "They just looked at me like, 'what are you talking about?' They had no idea we were talking about a day care center in the church, and I went home and I just told Whitney, I'm like, Whitney, there is a playground, there's classrooms, there's sinks, there's you name it, it's perfect for us," Waldner said. While the church didn't plan on moving a day care into the building, members quickly got on board with the idea. "Jared and I walked out of out of that meeting on a Saturday and from there, it took about ten days to get approval from our church," Smith said. Now, just a few months later, the Little Blossom Learning Center is up and thriving. "So during the day we have 60 kids. And then after school we have another 15 or 16, depending on the day for the after school program," Reimer said. Filling a gap for not only families in Huron, but the whole community. "These girls have worked tirelessly on that and a lot of people have stepped up and helped them. And our community is really behind this and we're hoping that they succeed. We're in it to do whatever we can to help them," Kludt said. While this fills a huge gap in the community, Huron still has a long way to go before they can consider the childcare crisis 'fixed'. Click here for information on Little Blossom Learning Center.