SIOUX FALLS S.D. (KELO) — A new website is helping families and child care providers in the Black Hills with the child care services shortage affecting many areas across South Dakota.
Black Hills Find Child Care is a free software designed for families in the Black Hills area to locate and identify available child care opportunities. The John T. Vucurevich Foundation funded the website and is being managed by Klein Visioneering Group.
Kayla Klein, Founder and CEO of Klein Visioneering Group, said the new service seeks to help parents and child care providers.
“Parents were really struggling to find care in general,” Klein told KELOLAND News. “One of the reasons is some child care providers are unregistered with the Department of Social Services (DSS) who are essentially hidden where there isn’t really a way to find unregistered providers.”
The most recent data from DSS shows 787 state-licensed and registered child care providers from registered family day care (1-12 children), licensed family day care (13-20 children), licensed day care center (21 or more children) and licensed before and after school programs.
DSS’s website lists 12 “unregulated” child care providers. South Dakota law also allows for an in-home child care provider to have up to 12 children without registering with the state.
South Dakota is one of six states along with Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wyoming that doesn’t offer any funding for preschool programs.
Klein identified three goals they have with this project.
“One we wanted to make finding childcare easier, two we wanted a way to find unregistered providers and help them get noticed, and three we wanted a free and easy way for providers and parents to go on one platform and Black Hills Find Child Care does that,” Klein said.
Klein said the platform will keep accurate and up-to-date openings for all of the providers who are on the platform. They currently host around 50 different childcare providers, serving the areas of Bell Fouche, Sturgis, Spearfish, Lead-Deadwood, Summerset, Rapid City, Box Elder, and Hill City.
Klein said expansion is a possibility but nothing is planned as of now.
“What’s nice is the platform is already built,” Klein said. “other communities could easily add on their community to this platform and could buy into this service. I would love to see it expand but no other expansion outside of the Black Hills is planned as of now.”
Klein said she hopes that Black Hills Find Child Care will help stop future closures and give providers a powerful advertising tool.
“Closures are unfortunately something we are seeing so much more of around the state but if a closure does happen we are hoping a platform like this would help those displaced parents and find providers with immediate openings,” Klein said. “also if a provider is thinking about starting up its a free and easy way for them to market their business and help them hopefully fill up quickly.”
Closures of childcare facilities across South Dakota leaves a large number of families seeking childcare, especially in larger areas such as Rapid City or Sioux Falls.
Klein said that while this is a nationally used platform, they are managed locally.
“If you call us you are getting someone who lives right here in the Black Hills and we can help guide people through the process. We hope this is one more way to try and solve this childcare crisis,” Klein said.
