For working parents, child care is a never-ending balancing act. Cost is a problem even if you’re lucky enough to find child care that works with your schedule. Many parents have to choose between paying for other essentials and child care. This balancing act is frequently even more challenging for healthcare professionals in particular.
The cost of child care is eating up many health care professionals’ earnings, and schedule conflicts may force them to make the difficult decision of either missing work or remaining at home with their child, which could prevent them from giving someone in need of life-saving care the care they need. Burnout typically starts in this everyday reality, which is followed by turnover, a shortage of workers, and limited access to care. Our attention should be drawn to this issue, particularly in Idaho, where there is currently a severe shortage of healthcare professionals.
In remote areas of North Idaho, Kaniksu Community Health offers patient-centered care. It is occasionally the sole supplier for kilometers. But it was experiencing a severe lack of healthcare professionals, just like many other places in Idaho. After conducting an employee survey, our leadership team discovered that one of the main obstacles to luring and retaining talented employees was child care. They therefore made the decision to take action.
I was hired to start and run Kaniksu Kids Club, an on-site daycare facility that we believed may benefit our medical staff as well as the community at large. While their parents worked hard to care for others, we made sure that our child care center was more than simply a place to keep kids safe; it was a place where kids could grow, learn, and flourish while receiving excellent early childhood education. All of this is provided at a really inexpensive cost in comparison to the child care market rates in the area.
We opened our doors to 20 kids almost three years ago, thanks to a grant from the Idaho Workforce Development Council. We started giving the kids of our organization a secure, caring, and instructive atmosphere. We currently assist fifty children, with our healthcare professionals receiving precedence.
Fortunately, our CEO is more concerned with delivering this value than with making money, which totally alters the rules. We have been able to operate at a break-even point, hire individuals who are passionate about children, and offer reasonably priced care. Incorporating on-site childcare into our benefits package has proven to be a successful recruitment strategy and has improved employee satisfaction and retention to the point where our turnover rates have dropped from 38% to 19%.
One of the main causes of health care workers quitting their jobs is child care. Our state’s health care system is in crisis, even if we were able to find a solution at Kaniksu. To address the flaws in our current system, leaders in the fields of child care, education, housing, health care, governance, and legislation must band together.
Innovative solutions for a single issue, such as child care, could aid in the simultaneous resolution of several issues. It is essential to the health and well-being of Idaho’s workers, families, and children. In the end, this also affects the health of every Idahoan. Together, let’s discover these answers for our communities’ future as well as for the present.
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