Day cares plan for high demand as more parents return to in-person work

Many child care facilities shut down during the pandemic, making the challenge of finding child care more complicated for parents returning to the office full time, the director of a Huntley home day care said.

Little Hands Home day care received a lot of phone calls from families looking for day care between February and March, Director Amy Bradford said.

“I think it was a combination of parents finally going back into the workforce or other day cares in the area have actually closed down,” Bradford said.

The state of Illinois has at least 100 fewer day care providers than it did two years ago, according to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which doesn’t track how many licensed day cares are still open but does track how many received licenses.

Statewide, the number of day cares is down 3.8% over two years ago and down 3% over one year ago, state data shows. In northern Illinois region, the decline was even sharper – 6.6% fewer than two years ago.

The tightened market comes as more companies ask their workers to return to the physical office and work fewer days remotely.

“About half of those workers that stayed at home have gone back to work, and the other half are still working from their house,” McHenry County Economic Development Corporation President Jim McConoughey said, pointing to positions in, for example, human resources and accounting as some of those shifted to remote work at the start of the pandemic.

Some places decided to bring their employees back into the office two days a week, with different people assigned to different days to make the environment safer, McConoughey said.

Diana Dominguez, the coordinator of talent acquisition at McHenry County College, is one of those workers returning to the office in the coming weeks. She’s been working from home for over a year now, returned to campus twice a week in the beginning of February, and will be on campus three days in May and then four days in the summer.

Her son was in day care when he was smaller, but not anymore. He’s now four and going to school, and Dominguez said they now just need someone to pick him up from school.

“We’ve been together every day for more than a year, and even now just being a few days on campus I can definitely tell he misses me,” Dominguez said.

For many of these individuals, there’s been a new work-life balance. Working from home resulted in assuming household and childcare responsibilities on top of a work schedule. Now that people are returning to work, the household dynamic changes.

Some have assumed a full-time caregiving role instead, McConoughey said.

“Companies are trying to encourage women who were previously employed or furloughed to come back. I know there’s a big outreach with the child caregiving population right now,” McConoughey said.

As this outreach expands, day cares anticipate an influx of parents seeking child care services.

Home day cares like Little Hands Home day care in Huntley are more limited in capacity compared to day care centers.

“We’re licensed up to 16 [children],” Bradford said. “Right now, it’s about three different families a week that I have to let them know I’m happy to put them on a waiting list, but we just don’t have the room for them.”

There is a high demand, but also not enough facilities in the area, Bradford said. Like many businesses, a lot of home day cares were impacted by the pandemic and many of them closed down as a result.

KinderCare district leader Doria Salamone-Matczak is preparing to increase in its centers’ offerings so it can better meet demand. KinderCare runs more than 100 centers around the state, including in McHenry, Johnsburg, Wonder Lake and Woodstock.

“We are currently recruiting teachers in a massive way, so that we can help support all the families that are expecting to go back to work,” Salamone-Matczak said.

The state of Illinois released KinderCare and all other day cares in the state, of any COVID-19 restrictions and its centers are working at full capacity, Salamone-Matczak said. KinderCare’s smallest facility holds about 80 children.

“We kept about 30 centers open during the entire pandemic. We sought emergency licenses to care for emergency responders,” Salamone-Matczak said. “The remaining of our centers closed in March and reopened in June.”

The centers still maintain most of their safety guidelines: Classrooms are grouped into pods, staff and children frequently wash their hands throughout the day, teachers and support staff wear personal protective equipment, every child gets their temperature checked before entering the building, and only the children and teachers are allowed in the building, Salamone-Matczak said.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of the smaller centers not make it. They weren’t able to reopen because of the extra cost of labor and PPE [personal protective equipment], so that is certainly a concern for the early childhood community that families aren’t going to have a spot at centers if we don’t get them back open,” Salamone-Matczak said.

Franchise owner of College Nannies, Sitters and Tutors, Linda Gump, experienced an expansion to her business throughout the pandemic – after an initial drop following the stay-at-home order.

Gump’s business, which employs 216 people, saw 21.3% growth during the first quarter of 2020, and moving into the second quarter, a lot of their customers canceled and business was down 10.2%.

However, in late May, Gump’s Barrington-based child care agency grew more than expected, mostly due to the demand for educational nannies, she said. Business climbed 45% in the third quarter, 78% in the fourth and 129.2% the first quarter of this year.

As online education continued, many families sought out this service. With summer, they expect to continue doing well and possibly be even busier, Gump said.

“I think a lot of families are a little bit nervous about the idea of putting their children in a day care, which is a larger setting, and so the comfort of having them in the home, even though mom and dad are back at work is only going to help us continue to grow,” Gump said.

College Nannies, Sitters and Tutors established itself in the area in 2016 and expanded in March 2020.

Salamone-Matczak said she expects some “new players to enter the game” as the closure of some centers created space for newcomers.

“We’re seeing some of the competition call it a day and not reopen,” Salamone-Matczak said. “There’s space for other programs to come in. I think it will build back up like with every business.”