Amid child care shortage, The Children’s Place in Concord shuts down
Published: 12-21-2024 7:00 AM |
The longstanding Concord child care center founded by late Concord state Rep. Mary Stuart Gile decades ago has closed permanently, citing insurmountable financial pressures.
The Children’s Place, which was taken over by the nonprofit Waypoint NH in 2020, was built to serve as a drop-in daycare for parents who needed a more flexible option. However, the program in recent years has continuously lost money. Borja Alvarez de Toledo, the CEO of Waypoint NH, said he wasn’t willing to compromise the center’s mission of affordability to save it.
“The model that was proposed for us to minimize the losses and to make it slightly more sustainable were things that were really going against all of our values and principles,” Alvarez de Toledo said.
The Children’s Place closed temporarily after its summer program wrapped up in August and never reopened. The director and some staff members had begun to leave earlier in the summer, Alvarez de Toledo said, and the ongoing financial challenges meant it was time to consider closing down. Its fate was sealed by September, and The Children’s Place officially notified the state on Dec. 3 of its intent to close. Alvarez de Toledo said families were kept up to date throughout the process to avoid any shock or sudden changes.
The Children’s Place also included a parent education center, which remains open and active. That arm of the program hosts parent groups at the center at 27 Burns Ave., makes home visits and provides other family resources.
The center was founded in 1978 by Mary Stuart Gile, who later championed children and family causes as a state representative serving Concord. Gile died in 2019.
People involved with the center over the years spoke highly of it. For some, like former director Jodi Roos, The Children’s Place was life-changing. She first started working with the center in 1986, when it was still a volunteer organization. She was new to Concord at the time, and through that work she met other young families.
“Every two hours, I’d get a new shift of volunteers, so I just got to know a lot of people in the community very quickly,” Roos said.
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She remembers it fondly, calling it “state of the art” child care. Back in the day, so many people wanted to send their kids there that they developed a waiting list and other accommodations to try and serve more people, she said.
“It was so vibrant, such a big part of the community,” Roos said, “and so well thought of.”
She stepped away from working with the center in 1992, but years later, she started bringing her goddaughter to the center and got reconnected.
“I think it’s a shame,” Roos said of its closing. “I think there’s still a need.”
As one closes its doors, Concord has 25 remaining child care centers, according to a state database, including half a dozen that are run by the region’s largest provider, the Boys and Girls Club. These programs offer 2,184 child care slots in Concord and 46,771 available statewide, according to Jake Leon, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services. The number on waitlists is unknown, he said, since providers aren’t required to report thatto the state.
New Hampshire has a child care shortage, which is partly due to staffing shortages from low wages in the industry. From 2018 to 2022, the state had a yearly shortage of about 8,400 child care slots, according to the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. Child care is also unaffordable for most New Hampshire families; many state lawmakers ran on a mission this year to lower those costs.
When a child care center closes voluntarily, the state doesn’t step in but has several resources available for families to find a new service, Leon said. That includes NH Connections, which has educational materials and resources for both providers and families, and a free referral program called Child Care Aware. The state also maintains a searchable database of all licensed child care programs, including information about their quality ratings and offerings.
The Children’s Place operated at around $500,000 per year, Alvarez de Toledo said. With fewer kids during the pandemic, revenue began to decline. When COVID lifted the revenue shortage continued, and pandemic relief money has since run out. Before closure, the center was operating on a loss of $150,000 to $200,000 each year.
A consultant was hired to explore options, but the model they came up with would’ve involved making The Children’s Place only available for full-time child care, which went directly against the center’s mission. Out of the average of 28 kids it served, about three-quarters were on a part-time basis.
“That was not OK,” Alvarez de Toledo said. “We know that, first of all, it’s expensive, so that eliminates a whole group of people who can’t really afford full-time.”
For parents who work hybrid or remote jobs, many families don’t need full-time child care, Alvarez de Toledo said.
Their consultant had also suggested cutting down to part-time staff and limiting service to kids without behavioral issues to trim the budget, but Alvarez de Toledo said it would’ve gone against Waypoint’s values to not provide employee benefits or deny care from families who need it.
“Waypoint, for 175 years, has really worked with all kinds of population, often less fortunate people,” Alvarez de Toledo said. “We don’t say, like, ‘Nope, only people that have no behavioral issues.’”
Ultimately, The Children’s Place was too small to sustain itself – it was licensed for up to 30 slots but would’ve needed at least 50-60 to break even, Alvarez de Toledo said.
He added that the community has been understanding but sad about the center’s closure – especially since it’s been around for so long, and with the statewide shortage.
“We know it’s very difficult for the community because we know there’s not enough child care, and there’s certainly not enough affordable child care in the state,” Alvarez de Toledo said. “We don’t take those things lightly at all.”
Waypoint NH will keep the building and its options open.
“It’s not inconceivable that if things changed in the future, we would love to have child care,” Alvarez de Toledo said. “We understand that it is absolutely needed in the state, that more and more child care centers are closing … We feel we have a responsibility, if we can, to provide.”
Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.