A Silent Crisis The Lack Of Child Care In Minnesota?

In 2016, 74 Minnesota households with children under 6 had all parents in the workforce, tied for first. The number of licensed family child-care providers in Minnesota has dropped 20 since 2014, prompting concerns about the state’s efforts to protect children. A 2016 report from the Center for Rural Policy and Development (CRPD) highlighted a “quiet crisis” in Minnesota, highlighting the serious lack of child care.

The lack of child care in Minnesota’s rural areas is becoming critical, as more providers are exiting the field than younger providers entering, preventing parents from finding qualified employees. Minnesota child care providers struggle to fill over 700 open positions, and difficulty finding qualified employees means fewer children served, including more than. Family (in-home) child care providers in Greater Minnesota are leaving the field at a faster rate than people entering it, providing a bulk of child care in rural areas.

The relationship between Minnesota’s child care shortage and the decrease in in-home family child care businesses is examined in this analysis. Many families are stressing over finding child care and working to pay the bills. Family planning decisions are now often made in the home.

Central Minnesota lacked more than 13,000 needed child care slots, according to an August 2017 update to a report from the Center for Rural. Twenty-six percent of people in Minnesota live in a child care desert, which is census tracts with more than 50 children in which there are three parents. A 2017 update to the CRPD report estimates that there is a shortage of 35,447 slots outside of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. In the metropolitan Twin Cities area, most children are cared for in child care centers.