Quality Care for Children

QCCworks helps 2,500+ Early Childhood Education (ECE) businesses operate sustainably with a full suite of business support services. 

BUSINESS COACHING & AUTOMATION: Provides grants, training and individualized coaching to implement automation for payment processing and child care management. Using a cohort approach, participants work on individual organizational goals while learning from peers. Coaching addresses three key areas for sustainability: growing enrollment, reducing bad debt, and covering costs-per-child.

FAMILY CHILD CARE (FCC) PROVIDER NETWORK: Helps small, home-based businesses implement child care management software designed for FCC to communicate vacancies, collect fees and conduct administrative tasks. In addition, members share best practices and mitigate feelings of isolation commonly experienced by FCC providers. 

PROVIDER BACK OFFICE (PBO): Supplies expert staffing on financial management and data tracking to providers who prefer to relinquish administrative functions to QCCworks. PBO uses child care management software to track key business metrics, generate reports and offer clients strategies to improve business operations. 

BUSINESS TRAINING: QCC offers more than 215 trainings each year on finances, human resources, and marketing, customized to the specific needs and challenges in the field.

PROVIDER RESOURCE HUB (PRH): A one-stop portal for business solutions loaded with resources for hiring, operations, facilities management, negotiated discounts on good and services, and more. PRH saves providers time and at least 20% on items they purchase.  

PROVIDER BUSINESS EXCHANGE: A moderated Facebook group with 1,200+ members, where owners and directors access live forums and trainings, exchange ideas for addressing emerging challenges and access announcements for funding opportunities. 

Early Childhood Education (ECE) is a $4.75B industry in Georgia. 85% of businesses are independent/small businesses, and therefore have lacked corporate investment and innovation. The pandemic has revealed how vulnerable the industry is and how interconnected it is to the workforce. Child care providers have no cash reserves. When COVID hit, only 6% of providers thought they could survive more than one month of closures. 

Directors/Owners are early childhood professionals who have limited business knowledge and experience. In a 2018 study, 61% of directors surveyed by QCC reported that they did not feel comfortable reading financial statements. Due to the pandemic and historically low wages, they are experiencing low enrollment, higher costs of operation, and veteran teachers leaving the field with no new talent to replace them. 

Child care staff work long hours and make poverty wages (in some cases $9/hr. for lead teacher that have bachelor's degrees). Most are women of color serving their low-income communities. 

Child care costs up to $10,000 and most of the cost is borne by parents. Providers cannot innovate without incurring costs or passing them on to families. State child care subsidies only cover 55,000 (11%) of eligible children.  

Support from the American Rescue Plan has temporarily raised wages and increased subsidies. However, this support is set to expire in October 2023. Child care providers have a limited opportunity to make strategic investments in technology and human resources to ensure that they can leverage benefits beyond the expiration of the ARP support.

Accessibility and affordability of child care is intricately connected to how parents in the workforce participate in the economy. Without affordable and quality child care, parents make difficult choices such as working part-time, turning down promotions, declining training, and quitting employment (or being fired) because of child care related challenges (Opportunities Lost: How Child Care Challenges Affect Georgia's Workforce and Economy, 2018).

Child care programs often are not profitable businesses and, absent increased public investment, they would be forced to pass on the cost of increased teacher wages or quality improvements to families who cannot afford to pay more for child care. Recently, the director of the Early Childhood Development Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center said, "We have a product (child care) that costs more to produce than most of the customers who need it can afford to pay... You can't raise the wages of the staff without raising the fees to parents, and they're tapped out.” People need to understand that child care is a business — with a failed business model." 

QCCworks' solutions demonstrated in a pilot phase that programs increased revenue by an average of 24%, reduced bad debt from an average of $52,500 to just $877 (98% reduction), and/or reached and maintained optimal enrollment. The solutions we offer allow child care businesses to realize monetary gains and become sustainable without increasing parent fees, even without involvement of employer or government support. 

QCC’s target demographic is children in the 0-5 age range. We reach our target population by strategically partnering with parents and child care providers. Because 90% of a child’s brain is hardwired by age five, stable, high-quality child care and early education has important, long-lasting benefits for children, including higher graduation rates, better employability and brighter, more productive futures.

However, with 19% of children in Georgia living in poverty, we rank 38 in the nation for child and family well-being (Kids Count Data Book, 2021). The impact of high-quality child care and early education is greatest for children from families with low incomes, who are especially susceptible to poor developmental outcomes. Yet the high cost of quality child care means many of these same children are left out.

Accessing quality child care is out of reach for many, especially for families with low incomes. Currently, Georgia’s child care subsidy program serves 55,000 children, only 11% of income eligible children. Georgia’s Universal Pre-K programs only serves about 80,000 four-year-old children annually.

The majority of child care providers are women - predominantly women of color - serving their own low-income communities. One of the reasons they have bad debt is that providers are intimately aware of the economic challenges faced by the families they serve. As a result, they have not implemented strict policies to recoup unpaid fees.

Empowering women of color business owners who are providing a valuable service to their communities to run efficient and profitable child care businesses will not only result in positive child and family well-being, it will also encourage other entrepreneurial women to enter the field. This will result in a steady supply of sustainable quality businesses to meet the demands for child care. 

Georgia

QCC’s mission is to equip families and child care providers with the knowledge and resources to nurture and educate Georgia’s infants and young children. For more than 40 years, QCC has worked to help Georgia’s infants and young children reach their full potential.

While more than 360,000 Georgia’s children under the age of six are in the care of someone other than their parents every day for 8-10 hours a day, child care owners face numerous hurdles and competing priorities. They must balance ensuring quality care and education with necessary organizational, financial, and reporting responsibilities. They are early childhood professionals, educators, and caregivers by nature and training, with limited business knowledge and experience. Providing solutions to their business operation challenges ensures that there will be a steady and stable supply of quality child care options for working families. 

Assumptions/Knowledge:

• 90% of a child’s brain is hardwired by age five. Stable, high-quality early care and learning has important, long-lasting benefits for children, including higher graduation rates, better employability and brighter, more productive futures.
• The impact of high-quality early learning is greatest for children from low-income families, who are especially susceptible to poor developmental outcomes and for whom cost is a barrier.
• With child care costs averaging $10,000 (up to 34% of an average family’s budget), the cost of business innovation cannot be borne by families alone.

Goals/Solutions: 

• Prevent child care businesses from going under. In the last decade, 70% of Georgia's family child care homes have closed permanently.
• Ensure a steady and ample supply of quality child care. Families should be able to choose care that meets their needs either through hours of operation, location, or just their general sense of security.
• Prevent veteran teachers from leaving the industry. Child care wages cannot compete in today's economy.
• Ensure that child care businesses are poised to take advantage of funding opportunities through SBA, CDFIs or other investments. 

Activities:

• Incorporate innovation in the form of automated fee collection, data tracking, and communication as well as one-on-one coaching (Automation and Coaching).
• Provide negotiated discounts and repository of business tools and templates for operation and hiring solutions (Provider Resource Hub).
• Offer a place to network with colleagues in the same field, stay abreast of latest opportunities and challenges (Provider Business Exchange, Family Child Care Network).

Outputs:

• Child care business owners have the necessary tools and understand how to track financial metrics and make strategic business decisions, or they enroll in Provider Back Office to outsource administrative functions.
• Owners/directors access PRH business tools and discounts, saving time and money.
• Child care providers are aware of funding opportunities and learn about solutions to common challenges from their colleagues.

Outcomes:

• Stabilization of child care businesses in danger of closing (increased revenue, reduced bad debt, and/or reached and maintained optimal enrollment).
• Providers have increased profits to invest in teacher wages/benefits and/or facilities improvements.
• QCC has gained knowledge and experience to scale the project

Currently QCCworks serves 2,500 child care providers through its suite of business support services. Business Automation and Coaching is currently working with 200 child care providers (140 child care centers and 60 family child care homes) to implement automated payment processing, child and financial management tools.

In 2020-2021, QCCworks not only continued to provide a full suite of business support services, but also worked hard to access and distribute much-needed coronavirus relief funds. We successfully distributed $1.6 million in stabilizing support to 98 programs and helped 32 child care providers access $1.3 million from the Small Business Administration.

We are in the process of hiring two additional members to our team and hope to grow the team by at least two members each year. In five years, we can conservatively estimate to serve 1,500 providers.

Early learners (children ages 0-5) are our primary constituents. Stakeholders and partners include Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning, which licenses and regulates child care and provides funding. Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, Metro Atlanta Chambers, Voices for Georgia's Children, Professional Family Child Care Association of Georgia and Georgia Budget and Policy Institute are policy and advocacy partners. Clayton State University participated in a policy demonstration project to increase student parents' access to child care subsidies. USDA/Child and Adult Care Food Program helps QCC distributes 4.7M meals to over 22,000 children. Local and national philanthropic organizations, Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative (CDFIs) and United Way have supported us to not only provide funding but uplift our initiatives for visibility. 

The majority of child care providers are women and people of color entrepreneurs serving low-income communities where they live. One of the reasons for their bad debt is that they are intimately aware of the economic challenges of the families they serve. As a result, they have not implemented strict policies to recoup unpaid fees.

Empowering women of color business owners to run quality child care programs that are efficient and profitable businesses will only result in positive child and family well-being, it will encourage other entrepreneurial women to enter the field. This will result in a steady supply of sustainable quality businesses to meet the demands for child care. 

Quality Care for Children has strategically developed these solutions in consultation and partnership with child care providers and other stakeholders. As the Child Care Resource and Referral Agency (CCR&R) for three of Georgia' six regions, QCC works closely with child care owners, directors, and teachers. We provide expert consultation and training to help them meet state standards and become Quality Rated (Georgia's quality rating improvement system). This work represents our first touch point with many small businesses, working directly with child care providers and parents.

QCC and Georgia's Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) conducted a 2018 survey that highlighted the low literacy among child care providers of business operation and financial management. A report by GEEARS and Metro Atlanta Chambers in 2018 highlighted how the challenges of child care are affecting parents' involvement in the workforce and thus their opportunities to lift their families up and out of poverty. As the COVID pandemic hit, GEEARS and QCC conducted a survey to assess the viability of ECE businesses that informed us that only 6% of providers thought they could sustain beyond one month of closure. 

Our strategic partners, listed above as well as the child care leaders involved in the solution are based in Georgia and have strong ties in the community. They have intimate knowledge of the daily circumstances of that families and child care providers experience. The child care leaders and QCCworks members work hand in hand. 

Quality Care for Children has a 40+ years of history as a leading voice for early learners and their families in Georgia. In addition to the business support services through QCCworks, QCC serves as one of only three Child Care Resource and Referral Agency (CCR&R) in Georgia with free training, on-site consultation, resources and support to programs seeking to obtain or maintain their Quality Rated status. Quality Rated is Georgia’s tiered improvement system created to assess, improve and communicate the quality in early and school‐age care and education programs.

QCC operates 1877-ALL-GA-KIDS a free resource information line for families seeking child care, aftercare and summer program for their kids. We conduct community outreach events in partnership with many private and public entities. Our Early Head Start team provides comprehensive and hands-on support to providers and families helping them access public benefits, housing, transportation and employment opportunities. 

QCC’s Boost Child Care Scholarship Program (Boost) provides short- and long-term child care scholarships in partnership with parents, child care providers and local funding partners, to ensure that low-income families and early learners in Georgia have access to quality education and advancement opportunities. Our long-term support ranges from 1-3 years or until the child enters kindergarten. It includes Boost: Making College Possible (Boost: MCP) to children of college-student parents in partnership with select universities; Boost: Parent Child Success in partnership with City of Atlanta, Atlanta Public School and GEEARS, and federal CCAMPIS (Child Care Access Means Parents In School) in partnership with Clayton State University.  Our short-term support is in the form of Emergency Child Care Scholarships, providing up to 12 weeks of assistance for children whose families are experiencing crises such as homelessness, job loss and other temporary challenges.  

QCC has 40+ years of experience as a trusted loyal partner with families and child care providers. With QCC's support, Georgia has incorporated Quality Rated, a quality rating and improvement system, which has brought funding and technical assistance to child care providers to improve the quality of their services. 

In partnership with QCC, 22,000 children in 640 child care facilities in Georgia have access to three meals a day that are high quality and approved by USDA. 

QCC has undertaken projects (Boost: CAPS Gap and Boost: Making College Possible) to demonstrate need for policy changes. Both projects resulted in the DECAL changing its policy to benefit low-income families access the child care subsidy.  The examples listed above are not possible without trust, collaboration, and communication with child care providers. Our TA staff have daily and weekly communications, and our marketing and outreach teams communicate via social media, texts, and email. 

In the next five years, we anticipate bringing in 1,500 child care providers into the QCCworks project. Currently, our team of six members are working with 200 child care providers. We are adding two new members to our team. With continued financial support, we have all the tools and strategies we need to scale up. As we scale, we plan to conduct cohorts by regions so that we will be able to address challenges in their particular geographic regions, like zoning ordinances or negotiating with local building management, etc. We anticipate that this regional cohort approach will bring added benefits to the programs.  

We believe the solution we are proposing is going to work for two reasons. The challenges that the child care industry faces are not new. However, the pandemic shone a bright light on the industry and the critical role it plays in the economy. It lifted the lack of affordable, and lack of flexible schedule of care, to national attention. Right now, we have the attention of industry leaders who are looking for solutions. 

Secondly and more importantly, the support we provide through QCCworks is a hands-on support that goes beyond training and capacity building. We are working side-by-side with the providers and bringing expertise in business administration, implementing technological solutions with great results. There are no similar approaches for business solution in the child care sector that we are aware of. 

QCC has been strategically thinking and developing solutions over time. We started out with creating a network of providers, created a portal for negotiated business solutions, hiring solutions and are now offering technology based solutions and coaching. We have led this project from a concept and pilot phase to growth phase. We are well poised to enter the scale phase of the project. With the funding and exposure to experts in business solutions from Truist and MIT, we hope to not only have financial support, but expertise to scale up our project.  

The solutions we are working on address existing problems. However, they do not solve the challenges of lack of capital investment or bringing down the cost of child care. We are excited to partner with researchers and innovators from MIT/Truist who could help us identify innovations that would disrupt the status quo. 

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Financial - Child care businesses have varied sources of income including parent fees, grants and contracts, and reimbursements for participating the USDA's Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Quality Care for Children is interested in finding policy and market solutions where the cost can be shared with employers and government. We are interested in exploring loan programs that have acceptable terms that child care providers can use to make capitol investments. 

Monitoring & Evaluation - We are currently using the Iron Triangle for ECE Businesses as a model to assess the success of QCCworks' interventions. We are interested in academic research/evaluation tools to ensure that our strategies and theory of change are rigorous and will be replicable during the scale-up phase. 

Technology -While there has been some industry-specific technological innovation, there is not a full menu of options to choose from. We are interested in having tech experts look at our model, look at the solutions we have developed and recommend improved tech or methods. 

The work we are doing and the partners we are working with are addressing existing challenges in the child care industry. However, the child care system needs innovation, disruption and investment. We are interested in partnering with technology innovators such as Google, financial institutions who can extend capital to ECE business owners to improve/modernize their facilities infrastructure and offer them terms that are generous, and builders/construction companies that can help modernize the infrastructure as well as be fluent in ECE regulations. We are interested in partnering with businesses and local, state and federal government or in public/private partnerships that can help lower the cost of child care for families, similar to the Michigan Tri-Share program.