DES MOINES, Iowa — A new state website will help Iowa families find child care openings in real time, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced on Thursday.
As one of the final remaining recommendations from Child Care Task Force — created to deal with the child care shortage that intensified amidst the COVID pandemic — the state on Thursday unveiled the new Iowa Child Care Connect website.
"It is a central online online hub for working parents that can quickly and easily find child care providers that are near them that have openings available now," Reynolds said.
Aggregating from multiple data sources, including the Child Care Management System that supports around 3,500 providers, Reynolds believes the online tool will "fundamentally change" how Iowa's working parents find child care.
The website can also map locations of child care centers on their route to work, identify centers that have availability and provide a side-by-side comparison of providers.
"This tool will allow the state to pinpoint exactly where and why child care access is limited in parts of Iowa, and that will allow our teams to be able to apply data driven decisions to identify solutions," Reynolds said.
Since the pandemic, the governor said Iowa has invested $545 million in child care and created 24,207 new child care slots across the state.
"We've infused millions of dollars into the child care in the state, we're really leading the nation in that space," said Kelly Garcia, Director of the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. "These dollars have expanded child care slots, they've increased child care workers' pay, they've eased unnecessary regulations and red tape that prevented child care providers from expanding. But we are absolutely not done."