Child care providers in Aroostook are about to get much-needed help

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine – In the last 40 years, Debra Johnston has experienced all the ups and downs of being a child care provider in northern Maine.

For most of that time, Johnston has cared for no more than 13 children from 6 months old to middle school-aged out of her Presque Isle home. It’s more than just babysitting children for a few hours, she said. A typical day involves preparing meals and snacks, giving children time to play and teaching them important life lessons, like sharing, minding their manners and getting along with others.

Perhaps the biggest reward, Johnston said, is forming relationships with the children that often last a lifetime.

“It’s wonderful to see children grow up and know that you played a role in raising them,” Johnston said. “My children get very close, like they’re part of the family.”

But like other child care providers in Aroostook, Johnston has worried about whether she could sustain her business for parents and children who need her. Child care workers are getting harder to find.

The situation Johnston and others are facing prompted United Way to join a local stakeholders group tasked with finding solutions. Their first project will be opening the Aroostook County Child Care Resource Center at United Way’s Presque Isle building later this summer to assist aspiring providers with state-mandated licensing, keeping a running list of providers and training a new cohort of substitute child care workers.

The resource center will especially help Aroostook, which, out of Maine’s 16 counties, has the highest gap in child care services, meaning that the number of children in need exceeds capacity. In the past five years, 81 licensed child care centers in the county closed, and only 38 opened during that same period.

Eighty-four total centers exist today, leaving the county with an estimated 2,561 children in need and a gap of 565 potential slots, according to a study from the Bipartisan Policy Center .

Many home and center-based child care facilities are struggling due to staff shortages, backlogs in state subsidy payments , increased operational costs like heating oil and being unable to raise parents’ fees in an already harsh economy. When new centers do open, parents often face long wait lists .

Just this year alone, a center in Washburn closed, leaving 20 children without care, and another in Ashland will close this summer after the owner retires, affecting 32 children, said Sarah Duncan, executive director for United Way of Aroostook.

When parents cannot find open child care slots, many leave the workforce entirely. Employers who already struggle to find qualified workers have fewer people to choose from, Duncan said.

Taking care of children is a challenge every day, but it’s even harder when you do not have enough workers to replace those who resign or call out sick, said Jolene Blake, owner of Circle of Friends in Presque Isle.

Between her two centers, both located on Parsons Road in Presque Isle, Blake and her staff of 26 care for 130 children total. Most employees are teachers and assistant teachers, which allows Circle of Friends more time and resources to lead educational activities that align with what children learn in school.

But even losing just one employee for a day or two because of illness or another emergency can leave staff scrambling to adjust schedules and meet state-required ratios of 1:10 for toddlers, 1:13 for children aged 5 and older, Blake said.

“We still have to cover that [teacher’s] group [of children] and move teachers and children around to meet ratios,” Blake said. “Having a substitute worker base in Aroostook would be a game changer for most of these [larger] centers.”

It could also help home-based providers like Johnston, who said she struggles to recruit extra workers due to limits on what she can pay.

As of 2023, the average hourly wage for child care workers in Maine was $15.42 per hour, or $32,000 per year. Earlier this year, nearly 7,000 workers began receiving increased stipends on top of hourly pay, based on education and experience. The Legislature and Gov. Janet Mills approved higher stipends in the state’s biennial budget as a way to entice more people into the child care field.

Johnston used to employ two “helpers” but now only has one. Since state regulations do not allow Johnston to leave children alone with just one secondary worker, she had to close for a day when she traveled to Bangor this year for carpal tunnel surgery, and again twice more when she attended follow-up appointments.

Johnston put the surgery off for a long time “because I hate to close and inconvenience the parents,” she said.

Whether someone opens a home or center-based facility should be based on an aspiring providers’ goals and what they feel they can achieve, Johnston said.

But regardless of location, providers must check off many boxes before they’re ready to open doors. Maine Department of Health and Human Services’ child care licensing rules are extensive.

For instance, before any mandatory home or center inspections take place, all providers need to submit a certificate of occupancy for their building and many written plans of action, including proposed center policies for employees and parents and detailed plans for child drop-off and pick-up times, emergencies and dealing with illness outbreaks.

“It’s quite a process,” Blake said. “Sometimes providers wait two or three months for their inspections, others wait a shorter time. It depends on how much demand there is for the licensing agent.”

Routine inspections typically occur annually after the date a provider receives their initial license, if they need to investigate a complaint or allegation of abuse or neglect or when a provider requests to increase their capacity, change location or anything else about their program, according to Maine DHHS guidelines .

Many initial and ongoing child care license training sessions are free and available online from the Maine Roads to Quality Registry , including those pertaining to health and sanitation, infectious disease prevention and spotting signs of child abuse or substance use disorder within families, Johnston said.

The often cumbersome licensing and training process can be enough to discourage some aspiring providers, but that’s why a strong local support system is crucial, Blake noted.

“We need to be supportive of each other,” Blake said. “I always say that if anyone has a question, they can contact me. Sometimes people just need reassurance that someone is there to talk.”