OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — As the availability of affordable child care continues to decrease in Wisconsin, a new project from the non profit, ADVOCAP, will aim to foster more child care programs for Winnebago County.
- ADVOCAP's new child care incubator project is meant to help new child care businesses thrive.
- The next step for the project is receiving Oshkosh City Council approval; the council will vote on the plans on Tuesday, Aug. 12.
- Winnebago County lost 44 child care programs between 2013-24, according to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
Susan Sokoloski has been the director of Tender Loving Daycare in Oshkosh for 20 years, and she’s been in the industry since 1998.
From licensing costs, to hiring enough staff, she knows first-hand the difficulties child care providers face.
She says she’s unable to staff enough people to keep Tender Loving Daycare at full capacity, so she often has to turn families away.
“When I first was here, back 20 years ago, we were maxed out at 80 children, and over the time and COVID, has completely dropped us down to we average 40 kids now,” she says.
She says when providers struggle, the burden lands on families.
“It's been very sad to see families not know what to do– ‘What do I do? You don’t have room? Where can I go, what can I do? I need to go to work?’ and we have no answers for them,” she says. “It’s heartbreaking.... We don't need less centers, we need more.”
The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families shows Winnebago County lost 44 child care programs between 2013 and 2024– a 32% decline in services.
“We're seeing a lot of centers closing, so this will hopefully be one of the answers that will help,” Kathy Doyle, business and workforce development director with ADVOCAP, says.
ADVOCAP is a non-profit serving Winnebago, Green Lake and Fond du Lac counties. Its goal is to create programs and projects that combat poverty.
One of their proposed solutions to the child care crisis is an incubator program
“Get a lot more childcare businesses started, that’s the whole idea,” Doyle says.
The program would run out of a new building north of West Snell Road on Jackson Street in Oshkosh. The building plan shows four different child care center spaces that would be a brick and mortar for up-and-coming providers.
“They’ll be able to walk through the door and be able to run that childcare center with what they have in them- toys, all that kind of stuff,” Doyle says.
The providers would have no start up or overhead costs, making it a low risk environment to start their business.
“It's so important because this stuff is a lot more expensive than you think it is,” Doyle says. “When they move in, they’ll really be able to make money immediately.”
Doyle says the providers would have complete control over their businesses, but ADVOCAP would provide support and business advice as they get started.
“So this way they can grow it, if they want to, and move into a bigger child care center, and then go all the way from having just eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve kids up to having a whole center that may be fifty children plus, and that's our goal, is to make child care available to a lot more people in our counties that we're serving,” she says.
The money the providers save on rent and start up costs can be passed down to families.
“It’s harder and harder for parents to afford child care,” Sokoloski says.
Doyle says already, they have over 60 providers interested in the program.
The project will cost a total of $2.4 million, and ADVOCAP executive director Tonya Marcoe says they’ve already raised half of that cost.
If the building plan is approved at the city council meeting on Tuesday, Marcoe says they’ll need to raise the remaining funds before beginning construction. She says once shovels are in the ground, the project should be up and running within 10 months.
Watch the full broadcast video here:
Marcoe says each provider would likely stay in the incubator program for about 2 years before leaving to start their own brick and mortar center.
Doyle says they’re expecting the project to succeed, and they hope to use it as a model for other communities.
“If this project takes off like we fully expect it to, it can be duplicated all over the place which would really be wonderful for anybody, everybody,” she says.
