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The FIND! Child Care tool went live this morning on the web site of bestplace4kids.com, a recently-launched initiative of Fort Worth nonprofits and Mayor Betsy Price to identify workplaces with parent-friendly practices.
Parents in need of childcare have a new resource in Tarrant County, born from efforts to help identify open slots for essential workers whose children are at home because of coronavirus-related school and day care shutdowns.
The FIND! Child Care tool went live Monday on the web site of bestplace4kids.com, a recently-launched initiative of Fort Worth nonprofits and Mayor Betsy Price to identify workplaces with parent-friendly practices. A coalition of child care experts, led by Kara Waddell, CEO of the nonprofit Child Care Associates in Fort Worth, developed the site in collaboration with the SMU Center on Research and Evaluation in Dallas.
Immediately, the site is intended to connect essential workers to childcare. But in the future, it could be a valuable tool in helping fill the demand for quality early childhood learning, Waddell and Ximena Antunez de Mayolo, a program officer at the Rainwater Charitable Foundation and also part of the collaboration, said in interviews.
“We’re all kind of bracing to see what’s the legitimate need,” Waddell said.
As of Friday, there were 7,799 childcare slots open in Tarrant County, including 2,775 in Fort Worth, according to the coalition’s figures. An estimated 52% of childcare centers in Tarrant County, or 434, are open. Waddell said the open slots probably represent about 10% of current capacity.
In the near term, the number of slots may increase because of current shelter-in-place orders, Waddell said. “We feel there may be an increase in slots,” she said.
Parents can use the site right now to identify child care centers with available slots, and to secure contact information. In the future, the coalition envisions more function that could include the ability to reserve slots from the site, enabling the site to keep track in real time what’s available.
The coalition had been discussing the need for an online tool for three years, and kicked it into gear last week, with the SMU center, which volunteered its time and worked with a Child Care Associates data specialist. “They built this in 24 hours,” Waddell said.
The need and demand will take shape as more impact of shelter in place and job layoffs set in, Waddell and Antunez de Mayolo said.
“A lot of folks have been able to make it work for a couple of days,” Antunez de Mayolo said. “But as we look at an extended period, I think we’ll have a better sense of that need once what we’ve been working on launches.”
