Gov. Kim Reynolds and Iowa Department of Health and Human Services Director Kelly Garcia unveiled the new website Thursday during a news conference at the Iowa Capitol.
Reynolds said the website is one of the recommendations made by a task force she established to examine ways to improve access to and affordability of child care in Iowa.
The state’s new website is called Iowa Child Care Connect and can be found at childcareconnect.iowa.gov.
“This is an online tool that’s going to fundamentally change how Iowa's working parents find child care,” Reynolds said at the news conference. “It’s a convenient tool that will help working parents navigate their child care decisions faster and easier than ever has been possible.”
Iowa Child Care Connect was created using $5.2 million in federal pandemic assistance funding, and will require $500,000 of annual maintenance, a state official said.
Reynolds opposed the federal American Rescue Plan when it was passed in 2021, and during Thursday’s news conference blamed federal policies for increasing inflation and thus the cost of child care and other family expenses.
The website was constructed in partnership with Iowa State University and the data and technology consulting firm Resultant.
Affordable child care is defined in a 2019 study from Child Care Aware of America as costing a family 7% of its income.
Families making Iowa’s median income of $79,186 pay 16% of their income before taxes on child care at a licensed center and 11% in a registered child care home, according to Iowa Child Care Resource and Referral, a program that supports quality child care throughout the state and helps providers comply with regulations.
HOW IT WORKS
When parents use Iowa Child Care Connect to research child care options, the website will show them which facilities have child care spots available.
The website also allows users to narrow their search for child care options, including by narrowing results to those close to a person’s work commute. It also allows them to see quality ratings and recent complaint reports.
The site allows users to display all of that information in a side-by-side comparison of multiple facilities.
The site does not include a child care facility’s rates.
The information on the website will update daily and is fed by a network of roughly 3,500 child care providers, both in-home and licensed facilities, across the state, state officials said.
Search results will include licensed child care centers, registered child development homes and non-registered programs that are approved by the state to accept child care assistance payments.
'POWERFUL TOOL'
Garcia said she was excited to introduce the program and said its creation has been a goal since she moved to Iowa from Texas in 2019 and struggled to find child care for her children, who were 4 years and 18 months old at the time.
“I struggled to find easily accessible locations here in the Des Moines area despite having access to the very people that oversee this work every day,” Garcia said. “It wasn’t readily available, but it will be now. This tool is borne out of those frustrations.”
Reynolds said state officials believe Iowa Child Care Connect is the first of its kind in the nation. She and Garcia said the data produced by the program also could be used to help state policymakers identify where the need for affordable child care is most acute in Iowa.
“This information is an incredibly powerful tool,” Garcia said. “This data will help give all levels of government and other decision-makers areas where they can really invest in their communities, where they can expand and grow because they’re experiencing high volume or shortage (of child care options).”
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