Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yes, this is important. Childcare was critical to me becoming a nurse. Right. Childcare is critical to us operating our fleet of paramedics and firefighting staff. Right. Whatever it is, they need to hear that and they need to see that while childcare is sometimes hidden in a lot of those kind of high level conversations, it is absolutely the underlying workforce infrastructure that makes all the of this possible in our communities.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Welcome to Life Reviewed, a podcast by Hope House Colorado where we invite you into conversation with teenage moms and the people who champion them. These stories of struggle overcoming and perspective shifts will challenge you to review life as you've known it. One story, one person, one conversation at a time. Oh, I thought I knew the kind of life that I would need. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Life Reviewed. We are so excited to be with you today and I'm super excited to have my friend Nicole Real here with us from EPIC Executives partnering to invest in children.
And we're going to learn a lot more about her story and her work and how it intersects with what we do at Hope House. But I'm just super excited to have her here and to have her get to share a little bit about who she is and why she cares so deeply about kids and about what we do at Hope House. So, Nicole, welcome to Life Reviewed.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: You are so welcome.
I It was so fun to me. We found out we got connected because of our work, but then came to find out that we had gone to the same church. When I'm a little older than Nicole, I think she might have been in youth group with my son, which was so fun. I'm like, oh, we have this connection way back when to Arvada Covenant Church. So Nicole, share a little bit about just about you before we talk about EPIC and the EPIC work you do there, which I'm sure you get that little fun joke all the time.
Tell me just a little bit more about you.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Well, so as you mentioned, you know, I grew up in Arvada, so born and raised here. Arvada is my place. I love it and you know, really wanted to work with children from the time I was young.
And so when I was in high school, I actually started working in childcare and became a classroom teacher.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: I did not know that.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: So you have the gamut of experience.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: I do, yes. So I actually worked for the YMCA for a short time as well. But there was a company called Stor check up in Louisville, Colorado and they had on site child care for their employees. They actually used it as a recruiting tool so that they could recruit top tech talent, really from the coastal areas back in the late 80s and early 90s.
That was one of the things that they created for their employees on site so that they could really have that as a recruiting tool. And both of my parents worked for the company and they received an email that said the child care facility was looking for teachers, and they sent it to me and I became an early childhood teacher at their facility. Facility. And it was a great experience because of course, I got the experience of working with infants and toddlers and preschoolers over the course of a couple of years. But I also got to see the difference it made for families to have that type of support right there where they worked. I had moms who came in to nurse in the classroom on their lunch break and told me that they wouldn't have been able to keep their career if it hadn't been for that facility.
I saw the deep relationships that families developed. And I still have relationships with families today. Wow. You know, the kids are graduating college and, you know, it's weird to see on. On Facebook updates and Instagram like that, but it's really cool. So I had that experience as a teacher. I earned my business degree and I actually then went to work in the private sector for a while. So I worked for National Home Builder. I took a. What I would call like a hard left turn on my career path, which I think everyone does. I tell everyone, your career path has zigzags that you'll never expect, expect, and you'll never know really quite where you're going, but that's a good thing.
And, you know, ended up working in the private sector in a home building company and, you know, financial services. Right. All those kinds of things. It was a great company to work for. I loved it. I learned a lot about the business community and working in.
In the business community in general.
But then Denver passed a universal preschool initiative called the Denver preschool program in 2007. That's right. And an old colleague of mine called me up and said, hey, we need some help building this program from the ground. We've got to operationalize it. We've got to build it in a way that supports our preschool programs. Right. And gives families access to preschool in Denver. Are you interested in coming back to early childhood? And I was like, yep, that sounds great.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: You know, fast forward through those years. I learned a lot around nonprofit management, all of the public policy systems and Things that happen behind the scenes that really impact children and families and the childcare space.
And then In September of 2019, I found out that Epic, which is a business organization that really leans in on childcare investments, public policy solutions, and family friendly workforce supports, was looking for a new CEO.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Oh. So it all came together.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: So it all came together. I was like, this is my dream job. Right. These are the two things that I love to do, and it's combining those things together. And so I actually emailed the board chair my resume and I was like, hi, you don't know me, but this is my dream job and I think you should hire me.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: And. And that worked.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: It worked. Yeah. I still went through a full interview process, of course, but at the end of the day, it worked really well. So love the work that I do and the fact that I've had the chance to really see this from different perspectives. I'm also a mother and I have a daughter who is 12 years old. And so as a working parent, I've experienced this as well and navigated that system of trying to find care, trying to, you know, figuring out all of the bits and pieces that go together to make your career and your family and your child's well being. Right. All those things fit together.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: I love that. And I want to dive into EPIC and the work that EPIC does because it's close to my heart as well, but. And has been powerfully helpful at Hope House, as some of our listeners will know. But I would love to just hear more about your family. So your daughter's 12 now. What's her name? Milana. Milana. So what do you guys love to do? What she like, what do you guys do together?
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Well, she's tons of fun. She's very independent.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. I wonder why.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Where did she get that from?
[00:06:36] Speaker A: She taught herself how to sew on one of my old sewing machines in the basement. She used YouTube to figure out how to sew things and started her own business.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: What?
[00:06:46] Speaker A: So she's been working on that. She figured out how to design her own logo and kind of create all of her business materials and actually worked with a local boutique to get her products sold in a local boutique already. So it's super cute. She loves doing that.
We just wrapped up a summer swim season.
You know, she's a swimmer. She's a swimmer.
Yep, yep. She plays the viola.
So she's very diverse in what she likes to do and so fun.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: I have an 11 year old granddaughter who we haven't we have not diversified into boutiques so far. Her main income stream is Grammy, but she makes these like stickers with the little bejeweled, you know, the little bejeweled bookmarks and stickers and things. And I buy them and then pass them out to kids, older kids. I got in trouble for choking hazard. I can only give them to older kids at Hope.
But I love how entrepreneurial that generation is. Gen Alpha. I think they are your daughter, my granddaughter's age group. They are so little entrepreneurs.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: So much fun.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Well, one of the benefits of having access to digital technology in such a different way, I think as well. Right. Growing up in this digital world, there are drawbacks to that, but there are also benefits where it's easy. I mean, my daughter built a website in less than a day with AI.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Last weekend. And it has E commerce built into it. Right. All those different pieces. I'm like, if a 12 year old can build a website in a weekend, yeah, that's phenomenal.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: I'm going to go home and call my granddaughter Sarah. You need a website kind of diversified, girl.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah. But you know, the technology makes it just so easy for this new generation to really, you know, use that as a tool to think about what they want their path to be. Right. And how they want to experiment and try different things with their career paths and skills.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: And when she was little, so let's see, when you would have needed childcare for her, were you at DPP Denver Preschool program or were you at Storage Tech?
[00:08:44] Speaker A: So, yeah, I was working with the Denver Preschool program and then an organization called Denver's Early Childhood Council. So in that organization, we worked with all of the licensed childcare programs across the city and county of Denver to help support them in their quality journey, make sure they have access to financial resources and grants and funding streams to support the important work they were doing.
So I was working there and my daughter was also going to a high quality, just like your facility here, a high quality early learning program. And it was a great experience for her. It really prepared her for school and she loved it.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: That's. So when you were talking about you worked at the YMCA for a little bit, I was like, I just realized I worked at the ymca, like why we care is what it was called Childcare center when I was like 15, 16, and that was my first outside of babysitting, like real job was working with those little kiddos. I always thought that I would be working with little children. I never ever imagined I'd work with teenagers and so now I get the like, beautiful combination of our teenage moms and their children.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: But.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: And I never really thought about I did home daycare, so I did childcare in my home for individual families. But. And I, and I kind of knew how difficult it was to find childcare just from having, you know, doing home childcare.
But I guess I didn't know the scale of what childcare really means and how it, like, supports our really, it supports our society as a whole.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Until Hope House and we started seeing the challenges of our teen moms even finding childcare. And so there's so many pieces, right? There's childcare affordability, like childcare has become so hard to afford for any family in general.
And then there's our families at Hope House who are qualified for ccap, which is the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program. And we will maybe talk a little bit about the challenges of CCAP being essentially frozen in all of our large counties in the state. But tell me a little bit specifically about the work of Epic and what you guys do.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, about 17 years ago, a group of CEOs and business executives, entrepreneurs, right, from different industries, they had nothing to do with childcare. Their day to day jobs had been convened to participate in a roundtable by the then governor and had really been asked for their input on, on how Colorado needed to think about prioritizing investments in childcare and early education.
And I think in that process and in those conversations, they had a big aha moment. They realized the economic imperative of employers and business leaders really caring about and thinking about the importance of childcare, both as it related to the ability to recruit and retain great talent. Right. Grow your organization, grow your productivity as a business leader and as a business.
But also, of course, in making sure that those children who are in our state, right. And being raised in families also have access to great opportunities and early learning because that's going to help shape their future career trajectory. Correct. And many of those business leaders, you know, to give them lots of credit for this, right. Are very, they were very visionary and I think future forward in their thinking. And they realized that, yes, it was really important then in that moment when they were coming together as a roundtable, but it was going to become that much more important as technology and demographic shifts in the workforce continued to play out. And so they created EPIC because they realized that childcare was also very complicated. And in their day jobs, they didn't have the time, the space, the expertise to really lean in on that the way they wanted to. So they said we're going to create an organization and this organization is going to be our voice for childcare solutions in this space. Right. They're going to bring the business lens and the business voice to the table on this effort. They're going to be our subject matter expert when it comes to the public policy piece and when it comes to helping employers and community partners think about how to actually implement solutions in their workplaces or in their communities around childcare as well. So that's really, you know, we were created by the business community to serve the business community and really be that partner that is mission driven and is really laser focused on how we can help the business community and our communities at large be successful in this effort.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Well, it's been so fascinating to be a part of epic. We are, are you considered a membership organization? I know we're members of EPIC.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we're 501C3. Right. So I say all of our members are really mission oriented. Gotcha partners in our work.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Well, we found out about, about epic, I think probably early in our capital campaign around building our own childcare center. And one of our champions, one of our donors, Wes Gardner, shared about epic. And I'm like, what is this organization and how do we get to be a part of this organization? Because in looking up what you did, I was like, wow, we are, this is so new to us. There's a huge learning curve. And you know, for our listeners, most of you know, we, our mission is to empower parenting teenage moms to become self sufficient. And that word parenting is pretty important. It means they already have children and it's really hard to become self sufficient if you can't get childcare. And for most of our mamas, their access to childcare is very, very limited.
And their openness to childcare is pretty limited. They're very much, very nervous and afraid of leaving their kids with anybody but friends or family, which is always kind of interesting because in all honesty, most of the time they're friends and are not super reliable.
So they may take a job. And then mom decides, well, you know, maybe mom relapses or for whatever reason, mom can't watch their kiddo anymore. So then they're out of that job. And so their, their ability to move forward is very much impacted by their ability to find care at all. Quality is not even a part of the conversation. Like when you talk about quality childcare, that is not even part of the conversation. It's just, who can watch my kid?
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: So I can go to School or work.
And then, you know, they came to Hope House and we started a babysitting program back in, like, I don't know, 2014 or 13, something like that. And then realized quickly, why are we just babysitting these kiddos while their moms are studying? We can be actually helping them learn while we have them for short little periods of time. And then that grew eventually to, you know, gosh, we cannot find centers that will accept a kiddo who is qualified for ccap, the childcare assistance program.
So it just became so difficult as we grew and served more and more mamas, really difficult to get them into childcare.
And so we decided we needed to build our own. And that was when really you guys came a little bit to the rescue. So I had never heard the word performa.
So I learned what the word performa was from Epic. We got to be a part of a program you call Projects of Promise and talk a little bit about that, what that program does.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we kept hearing from partners in the community that of course, childcare supply was a huge issue.
So the access was an issue, the affordability was an issue. We had continued to hear from a lot of partners that they had tried to develop childcare or tried to open a facility maybe right. From an entrepreneur and had failed. And so we really started to ask the question, why is this happening and what can we do to think about how to solve for that?
So we really found three primary barriers in that process as we dove into why, why that was happening. The first was real estate. People need access to ideally free but low cost and ideally tax free real estate to make the child care business model work.
Second was really going to be regulatory navigation. And there was a whole lot of regulation. There's, there is a whole lot of regulation around childcare for good reason. Right. We want to make sure children are healthy and safe and well cared for. And that's a lot to navigate both at the local level and the state level where you have regulation. And then the third was really financing and financial modeling and really thinking about the capital stack. Right. Or all the funding that needs to come into play to make that childcare possible.
So in projects of Promise, we were really starting to think about, okay, how do we work directly with partners in the community who are struggling with this challenge and, and we can help them tackle this kind of piece by piece. Right. We can help them navigate the regulatory challenges that come up. We can help them build out a financial model or a pro forma to understand what that short startup and kind of ramp up and run rate financial model looks like for that business. But also think about how to piece together all those different components of funding to make that possible.
And then of course, you know, you all had a great opportunity with the real estate here too. Right. Which is actually a great place to start. It's a place that a lot of people, you know, are still looking for solutions on.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: So we had the opportunity to work with your team on that and think about, okay, how do we provide the right technical assistance, the right knowledge, the right support, the right connections to people that we need to navigate some of these innovative ideas or solutions with to make this possible? And I drove in today. It's amazing just to like stand in front of that building and see it standing and see children playing inside and
[00:18:11] Speaker B: oh man, I love it. We drive into work in the morning and it's like. And you drive really slow because there might be a mama with kiddos walking across the parking lot to get her kids in the door, but to just see how happy those kids are. And they're always arguing over which sibling gets to hit the button that opens the door. Like they're pushing each other. That's like the elevator button. You know, your kids are always arguing over who gets to hit that button to go in. And they love it. They love going in. Like they're so excited to go into the center and be in their space and they consider it theirs. And it's, it's like those, the little ones who are part of the early learning center, it's like the whole campus belongs to them. They just march around like, this is mine. I can go wherever I want. It's the cutest.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Well, I mean, to your credit, right, that wasn't an easy thing to do. Yeah, it was really hard. And there are a lot of organizations and people who either don't have the means. Right. Or just don't have the resilience or whatever it is to handle that kind of challenge.
And, you know, we need people who think big and who are going to really be a force of nature behind some of these things to make that happen.
And we then take those things and learn from them. Right. We say, okay, there's things that we can do either through public policy or in local communities to make this a whole lot easier. And we need to learn from that and then fix those things for people who are going to come down the road next.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I appreciate that. Thank you. But I will say it was such a big learning curve for us and I Think this is true of really, of any work, but nobody can really do it alone. Like, you need partners who know what they're doing in various different areas to come alongside you and kind of champion you to get you to that finish line. And for us, obviously, never having run a licensed childcare center, it's a huge undertaking and just the initial, like, funding piece. So we're pretty good at fundraising. We have an amazing director of development.
No, her new title is Chief Development Officer Lisa Schlarbaum. I'm getting used to our new titles and she is, you know, she is a force of nature. But, you know, we got close to the end of that capital campaign and we're still short. And there was a grant you could apply for from the federal government that was through the ARPA funds that were available after Covid.
And it was a beast and we didn't know how to do it. And we got all the technical assistance from Aletheia, your executive director for Colorado, around that grant. And we received the $800,000 grant which really finalized our, that capped out our capital campaign. So we were able to do this, build this building completely debt free.
But then in addition, your assistance in how do we operationalize this, you know, building out that Performa and are we going to be able to make this thing run with, you know, the funds that we receive through ccap? So for our listeners, if you're not eligible for ccap, essentially our mamas are either going to work and maybe not yet in a position, career position where they can afford full time childcare.
And I will say, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I think the average in Colorado is somewhere around $19,000 a year, maybe 20,000 a year for an infant for one year.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: The cost of care.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, the cost of care. So you have to be making a lot of money or definitely have two incomes in your household or more to afford to have an infant in care.
And one of the little bit of a sidetrack, but one of the challenges that occurred when our state started universal preschool, the UPK program, which is awesome because it provides some assistance for preschool for our, you know, any family in Colorado is eligible for UPK, but it incentivized childcare for children 3 and above. And so we suddenly had this dive in the number of spots available to families who have children two and under.
And so that's just been an additional challenge for families across the board. But for our mamas, for those of you who are listening, I'll give an example of one of our Moms, her name is Yvette, is just an amazing young lady. She has. She had her first kiddo when she was 15 years old and found our program, came and got involved, got her ged, started working toward college. She really wanted to be a teacher and it's been a journey. She just recently turned 25 and is now an alumni of our program. But part of how she got to getting her teaching degree and it took a while. I mean, she was 15 when she came in. She's 25 now. She got her teaching degree about a year ago. And part of that was that when we opened the early learning center, she had access to childcare so she could actually go to school full time, have her kids in care and get to the point where she could have that job. But even having a job as a teacher, she's not making enough money now with three kiddos not making enough money to afford child care for them. And so the oldest is in school. That helps. But what are you going to do, you know, for. For your additional kiddos? So the fact that they have access to care at the center means she's got this fulfilling and amazing career. Her kids are getting quality care, which. Tell me, talk to me now a little bit about what's the difference between just childcare or babysitting and what does quality mean to you? Like, what does that mean? Look like.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Well, I think quality is subjective, right? To a big degree. Certainly every parent has an idea in their mind of what quality is to them. And that's. That's okay, right? That's important. Yeah. For some families, it's really important that, you know, their child is getting a certain type of curriculum or content. Right. Or maybe a language spoken to them.
Right. So certainly there's some level of subjectivity. But we also know that children need to really have that language opportunity throughout the day. Right. The kind of back and forth scaffolding language that really builds those skill sets in their brain. Right. You know, 95% of that brain architecture is being built before age five.
And in this world of AI, right. We can't go through a conversation or an event these days without hearing about AI.
What is happening in early childhood development from a development perspective is just, just that much more important in today's world. Right. They are building relational skills, they are building problem solving skills. Right, Right. They are learning how to develop those social emotional skills that they're going to need for careers one day, which are going to be the premium skills, if you will, for the workforce. And so Having those like back and forth language opportunities, having access to a wide variety of materials for those children to explore and play with.
Children learn through play. Right. But having early childhood teaching professionals who can facilitate those conversations and those learning moments throughout are really important and they really do lead to a quality experience for children. Right. Making sure, of course, that they're healthy and they're happy and they're supported, but they also have those language development, you know, learning opportunities. Right. It's not setting kids down and. Right. Or forcing them to, you know, so read back the ABCs. Right.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, and I love that you bring up language because that's one of the things that we often point out at Hope House. You know, for folks who maybe aren't aware of some of the challenges of growing up in poverty, one of the statistics that always just kind of shocks me even still is that A middle class 3 year old has a larger working vocabulary than a poverty class adult.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: So if we don't, you know, encourage our kiddos in that language development early, we're really missing the boat. Like we obviously we want our, the children of our mamas to start school school ready. We want them to get to kindergarten school ready. And, and there are challenges for any kiddo to get to the point of being ready for school, no matter kind of what your family structure looks like. But certainly for our kiddos, who some of them have experienced living in a car with their mom, or they've certainly moved around with their mom lots of times, they're very, had a very transition, a lot of transitions in their very early years.
One of the things that was such a challenge for us and not fully unexpected, but also like, whoa, this is big, is just the kind of big behaviors that our kiddos had when they came into the classroom. And it took probably nine months for us to really wrap our brains around what do we need to have to be able to support these kids?
And it should have occurred to me, but it didn't. I'm sure it did to our director of early learning.
But the same thing happens in those kiddos brains as happens in our mom's brains when our moms get to Hope House and especially in our residential program. And for all of a sudden, for the first time, maybe in their whole life, they're living in a safe and stable environment. They know what the routine is. They know what to expect day to day.
They're not, you know, in fear of hunger or in fear of violence in their home. They're like safe in this residential program. And it Takes about three weeks for them to have a meltdown. Because all of a sudden they can,
[00:27:28] Speaker A: because it's a safe place. And then it's like, then you can just let go. Right?
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Let go. And you can maybe think about and try to deal with some of the stuff that you're not thinking about and dealing with. And you're just pushing down because you've got to be worried about like just the basic needs of life. Am I going to have a roof over me and my baby's head tonight?
So the same thing happens in the classroom. You get those kiddos in the classroom and they have us loving teachers who adore them.
They've got a routine. There's certain times that you eat, there's certain times that you play, there's certain ways that we play. And all of a sudden they're like, oh, I'm safe.
All these behaviors come out and it's like, oh my goodness, we need so many supports. We need a behavioral specialist. We probably need, need two assistant directors because we have so much going on in each classroom that needs, needs to be managed each day.
And so it was a little bit of a shock at first, but now as we've gotten, we've been open about a year and a half, it's like, wow, you can see the difference. Once we kind of figured out what those babies needed, you can see the difference. Like they are, they are just growing and maturing and hitting those milestones. And the thing that was crazy to us, we predicted, so our typical kind of average is that 65% of our teen moms will either grow toward or become self sufficient. And you know, we're always looking to how do we move that needle even further. We figured removing the barrier of childcare, we should see 75%. That was our goal. In our first year, we saw 85% growth to both personal and economic self sufficiency. We figured economic self sufficiency, obviously we removed the barrier of childcare.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: But to see their personal scores grow like that was just kind of shocking to us. So I say all that to say amazing. Yeah.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Like childcare is like so foundational.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Right. It is like, you know, you hear about the importance of like two generation approaches. Right. What are things that can support, you know, multiple generations at one time? Like child care is that thing.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: It, you know, the parents going to be able to, you know, get a career. Right. And invest in their skill sets and their wage earning potential is going to be that much more, you know, tremendous in the future for them. But Also, those children are getting those great experiences. It does break the cycle of poverty, you know, and as you said, like, the brain research on this is fan is fascinating. Right. But there's something called ACEs, right? Adverse early childhood experiences. And we know that. But those adverse experiences in young life really impact people down the road. And like you said, like those mamas and those babies may have been living with that stress hormone cortisol, just flooding their system for months. Right. That's all their brain and body knew. And then they come here to a safe place, to a stable place.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Right. They can re regulate and they're gonna fall apart a little bit. And that's good. Right. I remember a friend of mine told me when I had my daughter, you know, she reminded me, she said, when your daughter comes home from school or wherever and she just falls apart and has a meltdown, it's because she's landed in a safe place with you and she feels like it's safe to do that. And I. Right. So then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take this meltdown as a compliment.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: That means she feels safe. Thank you. I'm dealing with this tantrum. I'm so glad you feel safe.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Yes. Right. Because every behavior is a communication and that's true for children and adults.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: And you know, I always just try to think of it that way of like, what are. What is this child trying to communicate? Right. What is my daughter trying to communicate?
[00:31:16] Speaker B: So share with me, maybe what is one or two. What are one of the. One or two of the kind of major challenges you're seeing right now around childcare for the state of Colorado.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: I mean, the state of Colorado is definitely not immune to anything that the rest of the country is struggling with. This is an issue across the board from kind of a big picture perspective. We have seen tremendous shifts in our American culture and society and the overall cost of living in our country.
You know, it was true that back in the 50s or the 60s, you could have a household that was self sufficient on one income. That that was true.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: It is no longer true for the vast majority of our country.
What is true is that the cost of living is so expensive with the cost of housing. Right. The cost of food, gas, like all those things that most American households, regardless of their preference. Right. And certainly if they're a single parent household, like you need to have those parents in the workforce.
And childcare is a critical component of workforce infrastructure and community infrastructure that enables those things.
A lot of our communities are what we consider childcare deserts. That means basically that for every three families looking for childcare, you have one or fewer slots available.
And then as an example, some of our communities in Colorado where we've looked at supply for employers, we have 10 families looking for care, and we have one to two spaces available.
Right. So we have a very big supply and access problem.
And secondly, we have an affordability problem. Right, Right. Because it's become. It is an expensive business model to run when you're caring for young children.
Right. And you're not gonna AI or automate yourself out of that caregiving ever.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: AI cannot hold babies.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: No. It's so important.
And, you know, it takes. You have to have great people in those classrooms.
Little children like to run around and need space.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: You need square footage. And of course, square footage equates to cost as well in this world today.
And so it's become a very challenged business model financially as well. Right. As we've seen, those costs rise with real estate, with taxes, with everything else that also impacts those businesses.
Right. They're trying to stay afloat as a child care business, and they know that parents can't afford the true cost of care.
Right. So they're out fundraising, like you are, right. To fill that gap and trying to make it. Make it work. And so we have an affordability issue, we have a supply issue, and we have to think about how to make this industry more stable because it does have an roi.
It has a return on investment for employers who invest in benefits for their employees, and it has a return on investment for communities. Governments. Right. And states that make investments in child care.
Those families, right. Parents reenter the workforce or maybe they work more hours.
Right. There's return on investment in tax base. Young families, by the way, spend a lot more money locally in the economy, so they have a stimulus effect when they're working and when they are active in their communities.
So it's really important, I think, even for local governments, as they're thinking about building out resilience in their own communities, how child care actually is an economic multiplier.
Right. A lot of people still look at it as a cost. Oh, like this is going to cost us X amount of dollars. No, it's a multiplier. Right. You're going to invest some money to get other money back in other places.
And so I think reframing that both for the business community and reframing it for our communities at large, whether we're talking about this in a chamber environment or with county commissioners, this is absolutely part of the Picture moving forward.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a super important point to make the economic multiplier impact and a little bit out of my Hope House hat. But having served on the Arvada Chamber board, the importance of childcare to the business community and the talent pipeline is just, like, so critical. And we need to see investments from different places because not every child care center is a nonprofit like hopehouse. And we're incredibly, incredibly blessed with our champions, our donors who supported building the center.
But even though we have these amazing champions who supported building the center, we get to the point where we're open and our kids are, you know, eligible for ccap, the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program.
And we hit this huge bump in the road in March of 2025, six months after we were opened.
And our whole Performa, which we built with Aletheia, was based on having CCAP for those kiddos. And we built a center that could serve 100 of the children of our teen moms and our staff. And little side note, I should say we had some very intentional conversations when we built our center around do we prioritize our teen moms or our staff? And it was a very intentional decision that staff would come first and then the children of our teen moms. And that was something to wrestle with because our teen moms are our. That's our mission.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: However, you cannot do your mission if you don't have a staff. And our staff are absolutely incredible. And they're essential. Like, there is no Hope House without the people who love on and care for and teach and coach and empower these young moms. So we purposefully said that we would have spots available first to our staff, then to our teen moms, and then to our alumni, and that we would discount those spots for our staff who are already called to do mission work, to be at Hope House and are not making what they might be making in corporate America.
So that's been huge. Just getting to see our staff's littles playing with our teen moms. Littles is like the cutest, the best.
But In March of 2025, we hit this, like this CCAP freeze. And I'm like, well, what's happening here? Surely this will be temporary. I've seen wait lists and temporary freezes before in CCAP. Over the course of 23 years of US doing this work, I had never ever in my life seen a full on freeze across all of the counties. And so kind of the short version of what happened was the federal government made a decision to change the model of reimbursement so that centers got reimbursed more for the enrollment of their kids so that it would be more equal to what you'd get as a private pay center. Which was a great idea because, you know, of course we need more CCAP spots to open in centers all over the country. However, it was a federal mandate with no federal funding attached to it. So that cost got pushed down to the state and the state of Colorado was like, ah, we already have a major, major budget deficit for the last two to three years in the state of Colorado. So the state could no longer, they couldn't afford to fund CCAP at the level that the federal mandate required.
And so every county which disperses those CCAP funds, every major county closed or froze CCAP, which created a twofold problem for Hope House because one, we have a center with 100 spots. We've only got 50 kiddos in our center, so half of our center is empty because our new moms can't get ccap.
That creates A, a huge budget deficit for us and B, and more importantly creates a huge mission problem when we can't get childcare for any of the new moms coming into our programming. If they can't get childcare, they can't become self sufficient. So now I say the word can't. But Hope House will never let that happen. We will figure it out one way or another. There will be a solution.
There's no way we're going to let our mamas not move forward. But it certainly creates a challenge.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Puts a lot of pressure on your organization, without a doubt. Right? There's more fundraising or other things that need to be done.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we, we are currently losing about $450,000 a year because those spots are empty.
We were very fortunate to have raised enough money to kind of see us through probably three years. Did a direct assistance campaign and raised like 1.6 million, which was incredible.
Buys us some time to work with the state to advocate for solutions to this issue.
But just as an example of how important this can be, we have one mom. Her name's Rosario. She's just, just beautiful mom. And we don't typically have moms who are as far along in their education as she was when she came to us. She was, I think, 19 when she came to Hope House and had already completed her associate's degree, ended up finishing a bachelor's and a master's while in our program, which is crazy, phenomenal, phenomenal. But the only way she could complete that master's was if she had childcare and CCAP had closed. So through that direct assistance fund, we were able to ensure that her daughter could get care at our center. She completed her master's, and now she's working as a. Like, a project manager for a construction company. She's just incredible.
And it was such a beautiful joy to be able to support her, to move forward in her dreams, to truly break the cycle of poverty for herself and for her little one, which she couldn't have done if we didn't. If she didn't have access.
And not only having access, but having her little girl in there just learning and growing and hitting all our developmental milestones and, you know, who knows what she's gonna do? That little girl's gonna grow up and change the world.
Marches around in her cowboy boots.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Thank God for the safety net that Hope House had there, right? To make that possible.
And I think at the same time, like, what a tragedy that our.
Our communities and our state weren't able to step up to help that parent with that dream and that journey. And we need to be able to do that. I mean, the reality is, is that the childcare assistance program, the federal funding that funds that program, we're only helping about 5% of the families who actually need help through that program, right? There's a huge amount of need for families in this space. We need to talk about how to solve for this, right? It is hurting our communities and our businesses and our economy and frankly, America's competitiveness globally if we don't solve for childcare.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: Right?
[00:41:55] Speaker A: And, you know, I think this story is, like, a great example of what that actually looks like as someone is working through this journey themselves.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: So what? Because it, you know, we. When you and I get together and we talk and it's, you know, sometimes feels like the problem is so big and so complicated that the individual person is like, I don't know how to help. I don't know what I could even do to.
How could I even touch all the level of problems that we're kind of talking about, right? What would your advice be to someone who maybe just says, okay, well, what should I either do or no to even help move the needle on this?
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Well, I would say the first thing that we need everyone to do, and this includes, you know, this includes teen moms, this includes business leaders, right? Everyone in the community, I think everyone needs to understand the importance of having child care in this community.
Right? You might be retired and have grandkids, and yet I'm sure many of the Services that you rely on on a day to day basis require someone having access to child care.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: Yeah. The bank teller.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: Right. The bank teller. The grocery store, you know, health services. Right. The nurses who are supporting our community, firefighters.
It's critical. Right. And even if you're someone who doesn't have children in a workplace, it's a good thing for your employer to support childcare for your co workers.
Right. It makes it so that people don't have to pull double shifts. Right. And cover their colleagues. Right. And all the, all the things that unfold when childcare falls apart. And our policymakers need to hear about this importance and the prioritization.
Right. We invest in our roads every year because we feel like that's important and it is important for people to have roads. Right. We all hate potholes and traffic,
[00:43:41] Speaker B: but
[00:43:41] Speaker A: we need to have childcare on the list as non negotiable critical community investments that are being made. Yeah, right. It has to be that way. It is just we have, we are fundamentally changed as a society and as a country. Childcare needs to be on the list. So if you're talking to your neighbors, if you're talking to your pastor, if you are talking to, you know, your elected official locally. Right. Maybe a city council person or even someone who's serving in the General assembly here in Colorado, they, they need to hear that. They need to hear that you recognize this issue. You support investment in this for your community. And, you know, it's important.
So I think that's the biggest thing to start with.
And, you know, we all kind of run into those various people in our lives. Right. Talk to your grandparents about it. Right. Talk to your parents. Love it.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: Tell them how, how critical that is to you. Right. As a professional and as a mom.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: And as we kind of, you know, move toward the end of our conversation, do you have maybe one example of something that EPIC has gotten to be involved in, whether it's at the policy level or maybe even just a project level that you're like, this is something I feel really proud of in my work.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: Yes. Well, I'm happy to say I have a number of examples of that, which is good, but I'll choose a couple. So on the public policy side, EPIC has always been a champion and has been kind of the driving force behind a special tax credit we have in Colorado. It's called the Colorado Child Care Tax Credit, and it's a 50% tax credit that people who donate to childcare organizations can take advantage of. I Know, Hope House utilizes this tax credit quite a bit in your fundraising. Lots of other organizations do. It helps us raise over $70 million a year in Colorado for important childcare work and organizations like Hope House.
And so the fact that we have been able to keep that tax credit going in Colorado for years and years, that we've been able to reauthorize that, we actually just reauthorized that this past legislative session in Colorado when we had one of the largest budget deficits we've ever seen.
And anything that was on the table that had, you know, a cost to Colorado was being looked at, we got that tax credit reauthorized for 10 years. Yay. Right? And, and we had, we had minority and majority. Right. So Democrat and Republican support, leadership support from the House and the Senate on that bill. They were sponsoring that bill.
So the message that sends to their colleagues. Right. The rest of the House and the Senate in Colorado and the message it sends to our community is phenomenal. It's that child care is a priority. We are making this investment.
Regardless of the budget situation, we're gonna do this.
And we're so proud of that because I think that has been a long time coming and building up that support and making sure that business leaders and everyone in our community can be a part of saying childcare needs to be a priority, period.
So I'm really proud of that. I'm also really proud of a lot of the work that we've helped, you know, get done in the community, including Hope House. Right. I mean, achieving a level 5 quality rating in your program recently. Woo hoo. I mean, that is phenomenal. That is so incredible. It's so much hard work.
Having been behind the scenes in those systems, I know what that takes. And you should be so proud of
[00:47:21] Speaker B: that because thank you for bringing that up.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: That's phenomenal. It's phenomenal.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: So for, I mean, hopefully it's not boring to our listeners, but when you think about your own kiddos or your own grandkiddos that are in care, there's kind of two pieces. There's licensing, which is really health and safety, and then there's the SHINES quality rating system in the state of Colorado that you can apply for. You don't have to, but you can apply for it. Which of course, anything quality related, we had to apply for it, which meant like hundreds and hundreds of hours of coaching with, I mean, we had some incredible volunteer coaches who came in to coach our staff, our teachers.
There's all these pieces to it around your business how your business works and you can get, you know, between a 2 and a 5. And to get a level 5 shines rating the first time we tried, I mean, it took so much work, but it was like so incredibly important for our kids because we want that whether we get the five or we don't get the five, we want that quality for our kids. But it was a huge, very cool recognition to get the five.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: That's amazing. It's a testament to your commitment because a level five on the first try too is not done very often. So congratulations on that. But we've also worked with employers like Steamboat Ski Resort employers like Denver International Airport Community Hospital in the Western Slope to help them develop childcare solutions for their workforce. And I'm really proud of seeing those things come to fruition because, you know, as an example, in Steamboat, right, they had 76 babies born every year and they had eight spaces for infants and toddlers in that town, right. So I mean, if you're an employer, right. Or you're working for an organ organization like, you know that if you start a family, chances are you're probably leaving town because you're not going to find child care. And so helping them implement new child care opportunities and Steamboat with their ski resort was really amazing to see that come to fruition. Right. Working with community hospital. They had land on their, on their hospital campus and they said, you know what, we're going to help build child care for our employees and for the community.
They built a facility as well and did a ground up build similar to yours.
And now their community has better access to childcare.
So I think, you know, Denver International Airport, phase one of their work, they opened a drop in childcare facility for their new. It's called the center for Equity and Excellence in Aviation. So it's a workforce development and aviation training center. Oh wow. And people who are pursuing aviation careers can go participate in workforce development programs and career training and they have access to childcare while they do it to
[00:50:02] Speaker B: sign up some of our moms for this now that I'm hearing about it.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: That's right. It's an amazing program. So I'm just really proud of the real action that we've been able to take with our community partners and employers. We're working now in eight states across the country, which is amazing. So we're doing this in other places outside of Colorado now too. And I think we're seeing real momentum both at the state level and the policy level now around childcare. It is truly an important bipartisan issue that policymakers are talking about and the more they hear from our community.
Yes, this is important. Childcare was critical to me becoming a nurse. Right. Childcare is critical to us operating our fleet of paramedics and firefighting staff. Right. Whatever it is, they need to hear that and they need to see that. Well, child care is sometimes hidden in a lot of those kind of high level conversations.
It is absolutely the underlying workforce infrastructure that makes all of this possible in our communities.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well. And as we close, I guess I would say to our listeners, if there's a way that you would like to get involved or help with this, certainly you can reach out to either EPIC or Hope House and we'll give you the, the access to the like list of legislators that you could write to and say, hey, we want you to pay attention to this, but also come hang out with us. Come go to our website and look at our volunteer application and see if, like maybe coming in and helping at Hope House to hold babies in our early learning and school age program, which is inside of our resource center.
Because our moms can't access CCAP now, we're looking at how do we encourage them to be using. We can do three hours of care at a time in our early learning classrooms inside of our resource center based on our waiver of licensure. And so we're looking at how do we get more moms doing online programs in our learning lab while we care for their children for three hours at a time, which is all we have access to at the moment. I mean, we're going to get as creative as we can, but it means we need more people coming in and hanging out with those kiddos.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: And just supporting Hope House to move those moms forward. So lots of ways that folks can get involved and help.
And always, as always, I always ask, what is one thing that you would say, Nicole, to our teen mamas? If you could tell them anything that might encourage them or just lift them up today, what would that be?
[00:52:29] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. Well, I would say number one, if you're not slightly terrified about what you're doing at the moment, either career wise or otherwise, you're probably not growing as much as you could. So really trust in yourself. Believe in yourself and know that you're going to take, you know, zigzags in your life path and, you know, if you make big bets on yourself, it's going to pay off.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: Love that. Love that so much. Thank you.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Be your biggest fan.
[00:52:56] Speaker B: That's right. Be your biggest fan. Because your baby is your biggest fan, let me tell you.
[00:53:00] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:53:01] Speaker B: Thank you for being here today. Thanks for sharing with us. Thanks for bringing your expertise and. And I'm grateful for the work that you're doing in Colorado, but I'm also really excited to see how it's growing nationally because it's making an impact. So thank you for what you do.
[00:53:14] Speaker A: Thank you for being part of it.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we love it. Thanks.
I didn't know the things I didn't know about you?
Oh, precious.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: So the things I didn't know the things I didn't know about you?
About you?
