When the Childcare Interagency Working Group launched grants in January offering up to $10,000 to child care providers in Wyoming, it expected high interest. The response was overwhelming.  Nearly 50 applicants submitted in the first month alone. The volume was so high it prompted the working g roup to adjust the program timeline.  The response also indicates what many people in the workforce realm already know, said Micah Richardson with the Wyoming Community Foundation, one of the working group partners. In Wyoming, she said, “we have so many spaces where there just aren’t enough care providers for the number of families who need this care.” Still, she said, “the response was quite a bit larger than even we thought it would be.” Organizers initially envisioned a bimonthly award process for the grant, but administrators have amended that to allow for more time to process applications and share resources with interested parties. It will open the next application round on April 1.  The working group developed the grant as one tool to try to patch the state’s child care gaps. Wyoming lost nearly 200 providers between 2014 and 2024, according to state data.  Though lawmakers chose to study the issue in 2024, little ground was made regarding policy during the 2025 Legislature. In fact, lawmakers nearly did the opposite when they attempted to strip pre-K qualification from a school voucher program that was signed into law.  A ‘business problem‘ The Childcare Provider Start-up Grant allotted approximately $72,000 to 10 providers in the first round of funding. All applicants, regardless of granting, also get connected with free support services from The  Wyoming Early Childhood Professional Learning Collaborative, the Wyoming Small Business Development Center and the Wyoming Women’s Business Center.  Because so many applicants emerged, those connections and follow-ups have taken some time, Richardson said, which helped motivate the timeline change.  Without child care for their two youngest children, Crowheart ranchers Casey Sedlack and Tyler Sorch often enlist their help on the ranch. Here, Charlie and Tillie take a break on a branding day. (Courtesy photo) The program represents a partnership involving several members of the working group and others. Among them are the Wyoming Business Council, the Learning Collaborative, Wyoming Department of Family Services and Wyoming Women’s Foundation at the Wyoming Community Foundation. Grants cover startup or expansion costs and prioritize providers serving communities with limited or no child care options and home-based providers. Considering the statistics, the definition of a community with limited options could apply to most of the state. Wyoming has a child care gap of nearly 30%, which reflects the difference between the potential need for care for children under 6 and the supply, according to a 2022 assessment.  It’s a common scenario around the country: Child care operators struggle to make ends meet with strict licensing regulations and workforce challenges. Parents struggle to find a spot for their kids. When they can’t, some are forced to balance work and child care, which makes full-time work tough. Others drop out of the workforce entirely to care for their children.  But Wyoming’s rural nature and unique characteristics have exacerbated the shortage, with members of the working group arguing that it’s more reasonable to view it as “a significant business problem.” The working group and grant program are offshoots of a partnership between the Wyoming Business Council, state workforce and family service agencies and Harvard Growth Lab. The partnership’s “Pathways to Prosperity” project, which started in 2022, set out to develop stronger pathways to sustainable prosperity across Wyoming, where the economy is lagging compared to neighboring states in the Mountain West. In examining the state, they identified child care as a source of that lag. “Much of rural Wyoming is functionally a childcare desert,” the group found. Estimates point to more than 10,000 individuals who may be out of the workforce completely here due to a lack of child care, according to the group. At the same time, they say, Wyoming is facing a tight labor market — and the dearth of child care further deflects potential new residents.  This graph shows the total child care capacity and number of providers in Wyoming. (Department of Family Services) “Childcare is something in which states ultimately compete to attract businesses,” their report reads. “Childcare access for their workers affects their bottom-line and childcare access and cost are a problem nationwide. Wyoming is failing to compete and losing out on growth and opportunity as a result.” The Growth Lab team zeroed in on the supply shortage when developing its child care policy recommendations released in July.  It urged the state to devote resources to start and grow both large child care centers and home-based operations. After the recommendations came out, working group members split up to focus on three initiatives: getting startup grants off the ground, exploring subsidies for child care workers and examining why child care businesses don’t always access the full range of resources available to them.  A $50,000 grant from the John P. Ellbogen Foundation plus $30,000 from the Wyoming Community Foundation’s early childhood grant and contributions from others seeded the grant funding pool, and the Community Foundation stepped up to administer the program.  (The John P. Ellbogen Foundation and Wyoming Community Foundation are both financial supporters of WyoFile. Neither played any role in the repertorial or editorial decision making for this story.) Other efforts?  “Response to this grant program confirms what we’ve long known — Wyoming families are struggling to find reliable childcare,” Department of Family Services Support Services Division Administrator Roxanne O’Connor said in a press release. “This funding is a positive step in helping providers open or expand so that they can offer necessary support to working families, but we know there’s still more work to do.” But so far, lawmakers have been reluctant to support early-childhood education funding efforts.  Whether to cover pre-K was the most significant difference between the House and Senate versions of House Bill 199, “Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act,” after each chamber amended and then passed the measure. The measure provides universal vouchers for parents who want to send their K-12 children to private schools. The House bill did not give money for pre-K costs, the Senate bill did.  Dubois resident Sara Domek and her husband relied heavily on her mom, Pat Poletti, for child care help when their son Tosi was an infant. Poletti, who lives in Cora, would drive over weekly to help watch him when there weren’t daycare openings. (Courtesy photo) The issue was at the center of intense late-stage negotiations over the bill, and ultimately lawmakers allowed income-qualified families to receive up to $7,000 to pay for pre-K education. Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, fought during negotiations to fund pre-K at the highest level possible.  “The Senate strongly supported pre-K. That amendment outperformed the bill itself,” he said. Pre-K was funded in a 2024 school voucher program that had just begun to roll out when House Bill 199 was introduced. More than 40 preschool kids had already been signed up by the time lawmakers debated whether or not to keep it, Rothfuss said, giving further reason to retain it. The 2024 No. 1 interim priority for the Legislature’s Joint Education Committee was studying early childhood education and child care. During interim meetings, Rothfuss proposed exploring a new state endowment to permanently fund early childhood education, but it was voted down. This year’s legislative committee interim topics have yet to be finalized. However, the Joint Labor, Health & Social Services Committee has on its list of possible interim topics “childcare sustainability.”  The state is taking steps to encourage residents to have more babies, said Rep. Jacob Wasserberger, R-Cheyenne, who presented the topic during the committee’s interim topics meeting. It makes sense to follow that by exploring how to make it easier to operate or pay for daycare for those children, he said.  “There’s likely going to be a multi-pronged effort that is needed,” Richardson told the committee, adding that it would include government-level support. “We are proposing monetary support here. I’m not going to beat around the bush.” The Legislature’s Management Council is scheduled to finalize interim topics on April 8. The post ‘Overwhelming’ demand for child care grants demonstrates keen need in Wyoming appeared first on WyoFile . ...read more read less