Valley News – Training for child care workers expands to Claremont

CLAREMONT — Dartmouth Health has partnered with the Early Childhood Education Association to increase the Upper Valley’s child care workforce. 

A total of $400,000 of congressionally directed funding will go toward the project, which aims to replicate work that the Early Care and Education Association, ECEA, is already doing in Lebanon at the Green Mountain Children’s Center in Claremont.

This project was one of 101 projects totaling $103 million earmarked by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., for fiscal year 2024. Applicants still have to submit an additional extended project application and the funding must be formally enacted by Congress. 

In the Upper Valley there are between 600 and 800 empty licensed positions in early education, ECEA Executive Director Amy Brooks said in a recent interview. For every one person that goes into the early child care field, eight to 10 children can be taken care of. 

“Forget about the community need which is beyond what our licensing slots are; we need more (child care) but we can’t even staff the child care centers that we currently have,” Brooks explained. 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Upper Valley had a shortage of between 2,000 and 3,000 child care slots, and there is no indication that those numbers have changed, Brooks said.

The early childhood education staffing shortage is largely driven by high turnover and burnout. The field does not typically require a degree or practical training, so many people who get involved do not know exactly what to expect and become overwhelmed and choose to leave, Brooks explained. Delays in state mandated training and background checks can also cause people to abandon their efforts and get a different job.

The ECEA’s workforce training program at Lebanon’s Children’s Center of the Upper Valley, Career Cultivator, slowly integrates interested people into early childhood education, while helping them get the background checks and training they need to work in child care.

There is a lot of preliminary work that needs to be done before the ECEA can replicate its program in Claremont. Staff at the Green Mountain center need to be trained as mentors and the classroom and training space need to be adjusted before recruitment can start for the first cohort of students, Brooks explained

While the ECEA plans to replicate its Lebanon program, this is the first time they have expanded into a new area, so they expect that some things will change, Brooks said.

In Lebanon, the program runs for part of the week, so participants — many of whom come from retail backgrounds or other part time work — can continue to work other jobs throughout their training.

Program participants earn 50 hours of experience and 6 college credits in early childhood education through a mix of classroom training and observing and working in child care centers, Brooks said.

The cultivator program helps participants meet state-mandated requirements and gives them advanced skills in early childhood, like teaching them how to effectively read to young children.

“One of the most important elements… is the long term value and benefit to the kids from being in a high quality program. We know that so much of a child’s development happens in those early formative years,” Brooks said.

ECEA and Dartmouth Health have partnered on multiple projects for “almost two years,” Carolyn Isabelle, vice president of talent acquisition and career development at DH said.

The partnership includes a mix of financial and infrastructure support. In this case, DH has a greater capacity to pursue federal grants than ECEA, so they were able to help secure the congressionally directed funding.

For DH’s part, the “access and affordability” of child care and housing are two of the “main concerns” that Isabelle said she hears from staff.

DH currently operates five child care centers “across the health system” for employees and wants to continue to increase child care around the region so that employees can access it close to their homes, Isabelle said.

DH and the ECEA are far from the first groups trying to address the Upper Valley’s child care shortage.

The Lebanon municipal government has been working on the problem since 2021 in partnership with Vital Communities.

In 2023, the city began planning a $22 million child care facility to be built near the Lebanon Municipal Airport that has since been delayed.

Construction was originally scheduled to begin in 2024 but has been pushed to 2025 because of the projects’ funding plan, City Manager Shaun Mulholland explained.

Now, the 2025 deadline looks unrealistic too.

The city hopes to completely fund the project through grants and donations.

So far, it has earned a $1.6 million congressionally directed spending grant and $50,000 from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation, meaning the project is still over $20 million short of the final cost, Mulholland said.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at [email protected] or 603-727-3216.