The number of home-based day cares has declined in Vermont, but the state says stricter regulations that kicked in last fall don’t appear to be the reason.
Many Vermont families struggle to find child care amid a local and national trend toward fewer options.
For years, people have opened their homes to offer child care. The state says the most recent numbers show home operators are closing up shop and aren’t being replaced with newcomers.
At the same time, state regulations governing child care programs have ratcheted up, but the study says the available numbers don’t show a correlation.
The data are incomplete, however, with only 56 percent of the programs that closed between July and March providing a reason.
The Vermont Department for Children and Families looked at regulated child care closings in the state. It found that the rate at which programs closed hasn’t changed significantly from 2012 to 2017, including during most of the current fiscal year, during which new regulations went into effect.
However, the number of people seeking to operate registered home programs has been on a varied trend and dropped in 2016-2017, the state report says. The most recent numbers available covered the period up until March.
The data also showed a shift toward child care centers.
In the last five years, Vermont has had a net gain of 1,522 spaces in licensed child care centers and a net loss of 2,860 spaces in registered family child care homes, according to the report. Rural areas have been hit the worst as they rely more on home-based child care because of a lack of enough families with young children to support a child care center.
“These families may have no other options in their town if the one child care program in
town closes,” the report says.
The Center for Law and Social Policy issued a report in January that found home-based programs declined nationally by 60 percent from 2006 to 2015.
Regulations that went into effect Sept. 1 didn’t seem to be a significant reason programs in Vermont were shutting down, according to information gathered between July and March.
The DCF report relied on information that day care operators volunteered when they closed, such as in a public notice or a phone call with department staff.
Slightly more than half of the programs — both home-based and licensed centers — that closed in that time period reported their reasons. Of them, 16 percent said they did so to relocate or change owners. Only 2 percent said the new regulations were the reason they decided to stop providing child care.
State officials spent four years developing the rules with input from child care providers. The regulations touch on everything from emergency preparedness to tooth brushing.
Existing home-based providers have until Sept. 1 to comply with certain of the new regulations.
