New facility aims to provide services for Pickens Co. ‘child care deserts’

PICKENS COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) — Pickens County Council is working with the YMCA of Easley, Pickens & Powdersville to provide more child care options in the county.

County Council allocated $500,000 in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to the Easley YMCA to turn its former building into The Brotherton Family Child Development and Training Center.

Upon completion, the 15,000 square foot facility will provide child care and day care services.

“The child development center will be licensed and should serve 165 students,” Sid Collins, the president and CEO of the YMCA of Easley, Pickens & Powdersville, said. “It will be serving infants through five-years-old.”

The facility has been under construction for several months. Due to rising costs, the project has gotten more expensive. Without the ARPA funding, Collins said the YMCA would have likely had to stop construction.

“It really is a game changer for us,” Collins said.

The project comes at a time when there is a great need for child care in Pickens County.

“[Around] 50 percent of Pickens County is a child care desert,” Claiborne Linvill, the District 1 representative for Pickens County Council said. “A child care desert is a term that means there are at least 50 children who live there, and there are either no child care spots available or at least three times as many children as available spots.”

“That means that more than half of the county is land where there is not adequate child care,” she added. “People are either not able to get child care, or they are driving long distances in order to find it.”

Linvill, who leads the county’s Childcare Workforce Task Force, said there are long waiting lists for day care centers, and many families can not afford to pay for child care.

“The School District of Pickens County released that 64.2 percent of families in Pickens County are below the poverty line,” Linvill said. “We’re dealing with a lot of people who need help funding child care and having opportunities to go to work.”

The county is hopeful the YMCA’s new child development center will provide many families with an affordable child care option.

“Like all YMCA programming, we want it to be affordable to everyone,” Collins said. “Scholarships will be available. That’s based on income or their particular situation.”

Construction of the child development center is expected to be completed in summer 2025.

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