CEI to establish incubator for child-care entrepreneurs
Brunswick-based Coastal Enterprises Inc. will support the startup and operation of new child-care enterprises with the help of $400,000 the nonprofit has been awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The money will fund the first year of a five-year initiative to expand access to child care in rural Maine’s economically distressed “rim counties,” where there are few care providers, according to a news release.
The award includes funds that CEI will deploy as loans.
In the first year of the initiative, CEI’s goal is to help launch up to five quality child-care businesses, prioritizing 40% of the newly created care openings for the children of families with low incomes.
Child-care enterprises satisfy three complementary economic needs, according to CEI. The businesses eliminate a barrier many parents face when they want to work, provide education and enrichment to children, and create new job opportunities for child-care workers.
CEI will use the funds to establish an incubator to help individuals plan and launch new child-care enterprises, then operate them sustainably. CEI and its regional partners will offer specialized resources to support business plan development and accreditation, access to capital, staffing, hiring and operations.
In addition, CEI will collaborate with registered apprenticeship programs to attract and retain employees and help them earn specified credentials and associated wage increases. As part of the incubator, child-care providers will be paired with a mentor, an existing child-care business owner, who has completed a course in mentorship and is able help develop the next generation of child-care professionals.
“More child-care options will enable more parents in rural Maine to work,” CEI President Keith Bisson said in the release. “Child-care entities have long been overlooked as social enterprises, yet they fill an important societal need and invest in their communities.”
Unmet need
The need for child care is significant. Across Maine, only 26.5% of children up to age 14 — about 55,000 of them — are enrolled in paid child care, suggesting that there are parents who would like to be in the labor force who cannot participate because they don’t have care options.
Many parents in rural communities either work part-time or not at all. Compounding the challenge, the number of family-based child-care businesses, the predominant offering in rural areas, has declined 28% in Maine from 2010 to 2016.
The incubator is slated to launch in early 2020.
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