With support from The Community Foundation for the Alleghenies, partners are working to replicate a Child Care Navigator Initiative to better connect families, child care providers, and employers in Cambria and Somerset Counties. A Child Care Navigator works directly with employers to assess needs, map available care, and personally connect employees to open child care slots while helping them maximize available benefits and resources. When working parents have access to child care when and where they need it, they are more likely to find and maintain employment, helping employers avoid losses from recruitment, retention, and chronic absenteeism. In addition, expenses incurred in providing resource and referral services to employees, such as a Child Care Navigator, can most likely be offset by expanded tax credits at the Federal and state levels.
Creative Child Care Solutions (CCCS), an Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) initiative at the Pennsylvania Key, has been contracted to understand how child care access, affordability, availability, and flexibility affect employees and employers in Cambria and Somerset Counties, and to gauge employer interest in participating in a Child Care Navigator Initiative. Your responses to this questionnaire will be kept confidential and will help ensure that the initiative meets the needs of participating employers.
If you have any questions, please contact Karen Grimm-Thomas as 717-405-6645 or kargri@pakeys.org.