Research and collaboration were the building blocks of a PSC project to improve child care access across the state.
The challenge
How do you build consensus among a large diverse group of individuals — each with their own perspectives, motivations and life experiences — who all have a stake in one of the biggest issues facing working families today? That’s what we were tasked with in a project focused on child care in Michigan.
In 2022, the Lansing Economic Area Partnership received funding from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s initiative to increase access to child care across the state. The Early Childhood Investment Corporation awarded planning grants to Ingham, Eaton and Clinton Counties to support data collection and create a customized action plan that addressed the region’s specific needs.
Why PSC?
PSC’s extensive experience in child care and early childhood education, like our work with the Office of Great Start in 2015, made us a clear choice for this work. Plus, it tapped into a few of our powerhouse skills: research, consensus building and strategic planning.
To uncover valuable insights into child care across the greater Lansing region, the Capital Area Child Care Coalition was formed. Led by LEAP, Capital Area Michigan Works! and United Way of South Central Michigan, the CACCC brought together 74 representatives from economic development organizations, local governments, child care business owners, parents of young children, and other dedicated community partners.
Child care is an economic issue
Access to tailored child care options is essential for caregivers to participate in the workforce and contribute to the state's economy. It's about more than just finding a spot for their child. They must consider the hours of service, location, cost, cultural preferences, special needs and more.
The CACCC needed data from families, child care staff and child care business owners to develop their action plan. They needed to craft a cohesive guiding vision that unified the diverse coalition members. That’s where PSC stepped in.
Our methods
Research: We gathered data to give the coalition a deeper understanding of child care needs across the region.
We gathered background data on:
- Early childhood education and child care in the region
- Family and caregiver data
- Local employers and businesses
- Regional municipalities
How we did it:
- Identification and analysis of publicly available data
- Surveys of parents and caregivers of young children, child care business owners and staff, regional employers, and municipalities
- Discussion groups with caregivers and child care business owners and administrators
Who we worked with:
- Parents, families, and caregivers
- Child care program administrator/business owners/nonprofit providers
- Child care staff
- Employers and businesses
- Municipalities
Consensus building: Our experienced facilitators ensured many voices were represented and drew valuable insights from coalition members.
The CACCC members provided vital qualitative data and sparked innovative ideas. But first, PSC had to get all 74 of them working together.
Attendees at a CACCC consensus workshop.
The groundwork
Each person who joined the CACCC brought their own unique backgrounds and interests, and also a shared and heartfelt goal: to improve child care in the tri-county region. We prioritized accessibility and creating a safe space for clear, open communication.
We did this through:
- Holding in-person and virtual meetings at different times during and outside of traditional work hours to ensure as many people as possible could participate
- Keeping group comments anonymous so that members could contribute honestly and candidly
- Setting participation ground rules for respect and making space for other viewpoints
Keeping these elements in focus, CACCC meetings centered on building consensus, setting goals and priorities, creating timelines and assigning responsibilities.
Discussion groups
Beyond the main coalition meetings, PSC led a series of small discussion groups that provided deeper insights into coalition members’ specific challenges. Parents and caregivers shared with us that when a family cannot access or afford child care, their current or prospective employment opportunities tend to suffer, ultimately affecting their economic well-being. Child care administrators revealed that staffing challenges prevent them from fully reaching their licensed capacity for child care programs.
These personal experiences guided steering committee members as they drafted a goal-oriented roadmap for the CACCC.
Extra credit
Beyond the main coalition meetings, PSC led a series of small discussion groups that provided deeper insights into coalition members’ specific challenges. Parents and caregivers shared with us that when a family cannot access or afford child care, their current or prospective employment opportunities tend to suffer, ultimately affecting their economic well-being. Child care administrators revealed that staffing challenges prevent them from fully reaching their licensed capacity for child care programs. These personal experiences guided steering committee members as they drafted a goal-oriented roadmap for the CACCC.
Strategic planning: We created a clear plan with specific steps to address child care issues across the region.
We combined our quantitative research with insights gathered from the intentional, facilitated conversations to create the Regional Action Plan: Capital Area Child Care Coalition, a report that presents a clear and achievable strategic plan for implementing these ideas.
The results
Throughout the region, child care is largely inaccessible, unaffordable for many families, and often unavailable when it’s needed most. Many child care business owners are unable to adequately staff their programs to the capacity their licenses allow. This indicates that the shortage of child care slots is probably more critical than published data reveals.
Why the staffing problems? It could be that regional child care wages are lower than the national average and even represent a poverty wage for some workers depending on their family size.
The regional action plan to improve the state of child care for Clinton, Eaton and Ingham Counties introduced four recommendations:
• Engage in and support policy-change efforts to increase access to high-quality early childhood initiatives
• Ease administrative obstacles for existing, new and expanding child care businesses
• Inform and support policy-change efforts to create wage and benefits parity among all early childhood educators with their K–12 peers
• Develop a resource hub encompassing the dispersed technical assistance (TA) resources available to child care business owners and providers and offer additional educational opportunities when existing TA is insufficient
• Assess existing regulatory processes and procedures that are barriers to business development to inform and support changes to the regulatory processes
• Improve access to early childhood education credentials
• Publicly promote possible careers in the child care industry to expand the talent pipeline
• Engage and educate employers about how to best support employee child care needs
• Build the capacity of regional resource centers
• Strengthen connection and support for child care providers by facilitating relationships among childcare providers and between child care providers and families
Ongoing work
This project was completed with support from MI-LEAP utilizing American Rescue Plan Act funding, from the Office of Child Care, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In June 2025, ECIC announced renewed funding, ensuring the CACCC can continue its impactful work for another five months.
In this next phase of CACCC work, we will focus on the following objectives:
- Reconvening the regional childcare coalition
- Focusing on parent recruitment and engagement
- Prioritizing and implementing goals identified in the Regional Action Plan
- Implementing child care business support strategies to strengthen regional child care businesses and nonprofits
- Strengthening the early childhood workforce
Since 2015, PSC has demonstrated our dedication to making a difference in the lives of families throughout the region by supporting research, strategy development and program implementation that improve access to child care services statewide.