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HomeMy WebLinkAboutFY26 LA2A 4Cs ResponsesNovember 22, 2024 FY26 Legacy Aid to Agencies HCDC Question and Answer (Q&A) Session Instructions The Q&A session provides an opportunity for commissioners and staff to ask clarifying questions about the applications submitted through United Way. Please provide written responses to the questions below. Written responses must be received by City staff no later than December 6, 2024. This process is intended to gather the information required to accurately score submissions. Written responses can be directed to Brianna Thul at bthul@iowa-city.org or dropped off at City Hall (410 E Washington Street). All information related to this grant will be posted at www.icgov.org/grants. The Housing and Community Development Commission will hold a meeting on January 27th, 2025, at 6:30pm in City Hall to develop funding recommendations for City Council. This meeting is open to the public and applicants are welcome to attend to hear the conversation. The meeting will also be recorded and posted online for those unable to attend. Agency: 4Cs Community Coordinated Child Care Questions: 1. Applicant is requesting a 176% funding increase from the prior allocation. What is the rationale for the funding increase? Historically, the City of Iowa City has only funding operations at 1% of our operating budget even though the majority of our work is done in Iowa City and supports Iowa City residents. Home Ties Child Care Center has never received City of Iowa City support; last year 94% of the children served at Home Ties were Iowa City residents. Around half of the children we serve are on Child Care Assistance—a very rare statistic in Johnson County, most programs cap the number of CCA spots they offer or don’t take any at all. This state aid only covers about half of what the cost of care is so we are losing money on those spots. We are also caring for children in crisis, who have very high social-emotional needs so our teacher to child ratio is very small, meaning that we have more teachers in a classroom than required by the state. All of this, including the increasing cost of food and other supplies continually taxes this program. We are the Johnson County sponsor of the Child Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). The mission of the CACFP is to provide equitable access to nutritious meals for infants, children and adults. Further, the CACFP is a recognized measure of quality in a childcare program. This program is designed to operate in arrears and is required by the federal program to be supported by other funding. 4Cs has never requested additional funding for this program, but in order for 4Cs to continue to sponsor this program, we need additional support from the City to November 22, 2024 ensure that we can continue to be a sponsor agency, and to support the in-home child care programs we work with through the CACFP. 45% of our Johnson County providers that are on the food program reside in Iowa City. These providers receive reimbursement for the nutritious meals and snacks they serve. This additional income not only helps to supplement their programs, but it is additional money coming into our county. Losing this program would be detrimental to the providers we support. More information about the Federal Food Program can be found at this link https://www.fns.usda.gov/cacfp Essentially, the 2 programs that are unique to 4Cs—the food program and our childcare center--are both loss leaders when you look at our slate of programming. The indirect support we offer to the childcare workforce is often seen as duplicative services to Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R). While we are very collaborative with CCR&R, our work with the childcare workforce is more directly tied to support of the Refugee and Immigrant population choosing to do the work in this field, as well as low-income providers, providing care to low-income children; CCR&R works with the childcare workforce as a whole (we do as well, but are more acutely focused on making sure the above mentioned groups are better supported, should their program need it). In order for 4Cs to remain relevant, and in business, we are looking for significant increased support from all funders for these 2 programs in particular, because funding we have historically received for provider supports, also supported the center and the food program, and we can no longer rely on that support as state funding priorities shift and the state contracts with CCR&R to provide trainings and workforce support. The City of Iowa City has pinpointed childcare as one of the top priorities in its City Steps plan for the past 10 years. 4Cs is the only local agency that addresses the need to support the childcare workforce holistically, as well as the children and families that need access to quality, affordable care. 2. Is the operating deficit in the budget accurate? Yes 3. Why are the categories for beneficiaries inconsistent? For example, 336 reported under gender, 370 reported under race, 393 reported under ethnicity, 469 reported under age, and 710 reported under geographic location. Mostly due to user error—our numbers and demographics don’t change drastically, due to attrition in the field, so there is guestimation at play when looking at future years—I just didn’t accurately ensure that the numbers matched up. The “710” reported under geographic location, however, looks to be a system error, as it added our overall Johnson County number to our county breakouts. November 22, 2024 Under the “age” category, I meant to add those increased numbers to our FY24 data, so that number for FY 25 should not be “11”, but “480” 4. FY24 completed outcome measures are significantly below targets. Please explain. Training Opportunities: We anticipated having 2 training opportunities per month—one for the general childcare workforce and one specific for providers in our “Starting Strong” program. General trainings were not well attended (or had no one show), so we eliminated those. Workforce training: we held a conference in FY 24 that had much lower attendance numbers than anticipated, which greatly impacted our target number The childcare workforce needs ongoing CEUs annually, but for the quality requirements, trainings need to be provided be CCR&R. Trainings can also be accessed online at the convenience of the provider, which is still a more popular method to obtain those hours. We do not/did not track data that had 0% actual outcomes 5. Please explain why the following proposed measures project an outcome of only 1: o Number of workforce skill training services offered to adults - 1 o Number of adults receiving workforce skill – 1 We are piloting a Registered Apprenticeship (RA) program at Home Ties with one person in this fiscal year. We are hopeful the program will grow over time, but are unsure of interest. We would take others into the program if there is interest, but because RAs in the childcare workforce are rare, we are anticipating a slow start to the program. This outcome is specific to our Registered Apprenticeship Program, none of our other programming. 6. How do support/services provided to individuals with immigrant/refugee status differ from other reported outcome measures? November 22, 2024 We are just more hands-on with individuals in these groups—so much nuanced work goes into becoming a provider and if you are not aware of cultural norms, the language and technology, you are already at a disadvantage to completing the trainings. Most individuals interested in joining the childcare workforce complete pre- service training online and at a self-guided pace. All of these trainings are only online and only in English. Knowing that the language and technology component of this pre-service training can be a barrier, we are more hands on with ELL individuals. Trainings with translation can also take a lot of time (sometimes double the anticipated time), so more work is devoted to ensuring that these individuals have the comprehension and support needed to complete what is needed to open their businesses. We have a business center specifically for the childcare workforce, where we work really closely to help them get started. Each program and individual has their own set of unique components and needs that our support is tailored to meet the needs, whatever they are, so support looks different for each person we serve. 7. Explain differences in application budget and previous A2A allocations: FY23 FY24 FY25 City Records $26,709 $28,000 $28,240 Application $69,087 $70,000 $96,679 We inadvertently added all funding from Iowa City into our A2A allocation. The City records in correct. The application numbers on our end include our ARPA allocation and our CDBG funding which are program specific.