About 52% of the Danville-Pittsylvania County area is considered a child care desert, according to a new Virginia Tech study. This means that there’s inadequate access to quality child care — an issue that the study found is hindering the region’s economic growth.
Alongside housing and infrastructure, child care was identified by community workshop events over the last year as a main inhibitor of economic progress.
These workshops, called Big Sorts, were organized by the Partnership for Regional Prosperity, a civic think tank focused on preparing for the rapid economic growth that Danville and Pittsylvania County are experiencing.
It’s common to hear anecdotes about parents struggling to find convenient, affordable child care, and about child care providers struggling to recruit and retain employees in Southwest and Southside Virginia, said Dylan Andrews, a Virginia Tech economic development specialist who worked on the study.
In fact, the local child care desert figure of 52% is very similar to the state and national figure, he said.
But the Danville-Pittsylvania area is the only region in the state so far to request a formal study from Virginia Tech to assess these needs, Andrews said, though the school is working with other localities on child care workforce projects.
Ashley Posthumus, another economic development specialist from Virginia Tech, presented findings from the study at a child care solutions summit event Wednesday at Danville’s Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.
The study found that the region has insufficient child care for both full-time and after-school services, and that care is especially lacking for infants and toddlers, she said.
About 400 slots are needed to close this gap in Danville, with another 410 needed in Pittsylvania County. And about 58% of licensed and regulated child care sites reported having a waitlist, according to the study.
The study surveyed nearly 700 parents in the region, and only about 6% of parents said they were completely satisfied with the current child care offerings in the region.
Through the surveys, the study analyzed the link between access to child care and workforce productivity and found that the region’s poor access to child care is impacting its ability to grow, said Posthumus.
Because of child care challenges, 32% of parents surveyed had reduced their working hours, 29% had turned down a job opportunity, 16% had left the workforce and 14% had passed up a promotion.
“If you were to apply some of these values to the larger region, if 16% of parents left the workforce, this would equate to over 8,000 people,” Posthumus said. “That’s 8,000 parents that are diminishing their earning potential and quality of life and it’s also reducing overall economic contributions that these parents could be making to the region.”
Child care affordability is a large reason that a parent might leave the workforce to care for a child. Since 2019, the average price of child care services in the region has risen 30%, the study found.
The economic impact of these child care service gaps in the region is $22.7 million yearly, according to the study.
One of the biggest challenges in providing child care is the availability of staffing. Pursuing further training and education as a child care employee is time-intensive and doesn’t lead to higher pay as it would in other industries, Posthumus said.
“There really is little push to improve the quality that is offered,” she said.
A local panel elaborated on this challenge after the presentation of the study’s findings.
Traci Daniels, an assistant professor at Danville Community College’s early childhood development program, and Rhonda Tucker, owner of a child care provider, talked about the low pay and demanding work environments that are common in the industry.
They were joined on the panel by Linda Green, executive director of the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance, a regional economic development organization. Green said that child care often comes up in conversations about businesses locating in the area.
“We fill out in-depth RFIs [requests for information] when we talk to companies … and they will ask [about child care],” Green said. “Most of the time it’s more about the quality than the cost. They know they want [child care].”
After the panel, each table of attendees brainstormed solutions to child care challenges in the area.
This input will be synthesized by the Partnership for Regional Prosperity, alongside the Center for Early Success, a Danville-based nonprofit that works to strengthen early childhood education in the cities of Danville and Lynchburg, as well as 14 counties in Southside.
The full Virginia Tech study will be available online in coming weeks, Posthumus said.
