Screenshot: Boston Opportunity Agenda report

 
Boston’s supply of child care is shrinking, a new report says. And this shortage is making it tough for parents who want to work and for businesses looking for employees.

“Boston’s child-care crisis was a gloomy reality long before COVID-19 entered our lives in 2020,” the report says. “As of 2017, 35 percent of 0- to 5-year-olds did not have access to early education and care seats in their neighborhoods, if desired by their families.”

The pandemic made things worse. As the Boston Globe reports in an article covering the report, “Recovery has been slow, with only 28 licensed programs reopening between last November and March.”

And some neighborhoods are harder hit than others.

“Most neighborhoods saw declines in the number of eligible children referred to early intervention, with the steepest drops, as high as 25 percent, in central Boston, Roxbury, and Hyde Park.”

The report — Boston’s Child-Care Supply Crisis: The Continued Impact of a Pandemic — was released by The Boston Opportunity Agenda, a local nonprofit. It includes input from a number of entities and organizations, including the City of Boston and Strategies for Children, which served on the data committee.

“I think what it adds up to for parents is, as people go back to work full time, in person, they are going to have a harder time, depending on the neighborhood they live in, finding care for their children,” Kristen McSwain, executive director of the Boston Opportunity Agenda and a report co-author, tells the Globe.

Based on analysis of data from 2017, 2020, and 2021, the report found:

• a 21 percent decrease in center-based and family child care [FCC] providers, from late 2017 to March 2021

• an 11.3 percent decrease in the number of seats available for children 0 to 5 years, from late 2017 to March 2021

• a 15 percent decrease in the use of the Ages & Stages Questionnaire developmental screening tool, and

• “a 40 percent decrease in the number of eligible children receiving Early Intervention services between February 2020 and February 2021.”

Despite this bad news, McSwain tells WBUR, “There’s a slate of things that we can do, and this is the moment for us to be doing them.”

The report makes four recommendations:

• “Advance the Early Care and Education Profession” and expand support for providers

• “Build a Better Child-Care Business Model” and modernize data systems

• “Increase Access and Affordability for All Families: Expand State Investment in Child Care,” and

• “Reform Child-Care Financing” by rethinking investments in child care for middle- and low-income families; and by encouraging businesses to take a more active role in “understanding and supporting employees’ child-care needs and building the public/private partnerships necessary to meet them.”

The report also points to “a set of recommendations for the next Mayor of Boston,” released by the Boston Birth to Eight Collaborative that the City can use “in partnership with stakeholders and families to address the creation and support of additional center-based and FCC programs. The recommendations also include opportunities to expand developmental screenings for infants and toddlers as a part of the City’s COVID recovery plan.”

As tough as the pandemic has been, Boston has to be tougher so it can reverse the damage that has been done to child care. The city needs more child care providers and a stronger child care system so parents can go to work and help rebuild the economy.