AMAESD Is Seeking To Bring More Child Care Programs To Alcona County

The Alpena Montmorency Alcona Educational Service District and Alcona community schools have been working together with the assistance of a rural child care innovation program grant to bring more child care into Alcona County.

“About a year ago, I wrote a grant. There was a whole slew of grants coming through Michigan through the caring for my future grants and one was the Rural Child Care Innovation Program grant and it was written for Alcona County, because Alcona County is in what’s known as a childcare desert. So the ratio of kids needing childcare to those available to provide it, is low” said Angela Bruning, Great start collaborative coordinator at AMAESD.

Writing this grant with Alcona community schools, has gained the AMAESD support from First Children’s Finance, a multi state organization that helped them perform a gap analysis to determine the demand of childcare programs in the county.

“One of our goals is centered on the early child care and education, what we call the pipeline. So what are we doing in Alcona, or what can we do to entice students in middle and high school that might want to explore that as a career pathway” said Bruning.

Bruning says they have an outreach group that meets once a month with childcare providers, in–home family and group providers to strategize how they can bring more childcare programs into Alcona county.

“Alcona School also has some existing before and after school programming going and we’re in conversation ongoing about, grants that might be out there to expand that. How to address the staffing challenges around before and after school programming. So there’s a lot of moving parts around the childcare challenge, there’s no silver bullet involved for sure” said Bruning

If you’re interested in joining  the outreach group or assisting in providing childcare alternatives in Alcona county, you can call 989–354–5366 for more details.