This story was written by Randiah Camille Green and created in partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. It is part of a year-long series focusing on the Hope Starts Here initiative in Detroit.

While Detroit struggles with having enough early childhood education slots to meet community needs, experts in the field say a lack of funding and low wages for providers are the root of the problem. Two groups, Black Family Development, Inc. and the Early Childhood Investment Corp., are leading the charge to improve early childhood systems for both child care workers and families. 

“What does it take to provide more seats? We need to have more people (working),” BFDI CEO Kenyatta Stephens said. “People aren’t going into early childhood because they are only making minimum wage. Sixty to 70% of people working in early childhood are on public assistance … And if they are qualified and can charge more for their services, people in the community can’t afford it.”

BFDI and ECIC are partners in a citywide Hope Starts Here initiative, supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Kresge Foundation, to champion young children and their families.  The initiative has six imperatives, or goals, to improve and provide quality early childhood education, health, and access to care. BFDI and ECIC work under Imperative 3, High Quality Programs and Professionals, which has three strategies — developing common standards and supporting providers with professional development opportunities; attracting, better compensating, and retaining the early childhood workforce; and aligning the early childhood and K-3 systems.

A 2023 “True Cost of Care” report, in which ECIC, BFDI, and Hope Starts Here participated, found that Michigan child care providers earned an average salary of just $23,020 in 2019. That came out to about $11 per hour, no matter their level of experience or qualifications. The report also found that there are nearly twice as many children in Michigan (about 62,000) who are eligible for Child Care Development and Care subsidies through federal and state funds than the 36,000 who are actually receiving them. “Making the Case for Fully Funding the Early Care and Education System in Michigan,” reports that the State of Michigan would need to invest an additional $2.2 billion in subsidies into the early childhood system to meet the true cost of care, just for those families at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. In this report, ECIC also presented several strategies to increase public and private investment in early childhood education and care in Michigan. 

Last year, the organization piloted an Infant Toddler Quality Improvement program, which gave providers upfront scholarships to cover a month of care at a time. This allowed early childhood providers to pay workers a higher wage and to hire more staff. Around 20 Detroit-based early childhood providers participated in the pilot program. 

“Within four months of the pilot, participating providers were able to hire 76 new full-time staff and four new part-time staff,” said Terrell Couch, program manager for the Detroit Policy Initiative at ECIC. “The increased staff led to enrollment additions of nearly 500 infants and almost 700 toddlers who were previously on the waitlist.”

Every year, the organization hosts an Early Childhood Capitol Day to bring families and providers to Lansing to engage with lawmakers on their needs. This year, the program was held on Wed., March 12. 

“Last year we had 200 folks in Lansing listening to and engaging with experts around the executive budget,” Couch said. 

Innovative advocacy initiatives such as these are helping to broaden the conversation about the needs of early childhood workers and families, while providing a framework for finding solutions. 

“This is a workforce that, through the pandemic, was the backbone of our economy, was doing the work to ensure that people could go to work but are not being paid livable wages. That plays into the broader conversation around quality,” Couch said. 

While the underlying focus of programming is child care providers and their needs, BFDI also has several programs to empower the parents. 

BFDI has connected more than 3,500 Detroit families to child care subsidies. Additionally, the organization has helped at least 1,000 families access a child care tax credit, to make child care more affordable. The grassroots organization also works within 37 schools throughout Detroit and Wayne County, with programming that focuses on literacy and kindergarten readiness. They also partner with the Detroit Public Schools Community District to align pre-kindergarten learning with K-12 education.

One of BFDI programs is LENA Start — a 10-week language course that encourages parents to speak to their children more. Participating parents receive a device that records the number of adult words and conversational turns happening when they speak with their children, to give them feedback. Families also receive books to help them build their child’s library.

“Research shows that parents often think they’re talking more with their children than they really are,” said Wendy LaMarr, director of Early Childhood Services and Community Impact at BFDI. “The conversational turn is important because those are brain boosting opportunities, as parents engage in the conversation with their children and the child responds back.”

BFDI also worked with Detroit PBS to bring the evidence-based curriculum, Read, Write, ROAR! to Detroiters, to promote pre-kindergarten to third grade literacy. 

The TV station said they were unable to “get it out in the community,” Stephens said. “We had partners like Detroit Parent Network and Brilliant Detroit … (and) we had the school relationships to help expose this evidence-based practice to families and parents who didn’t quite know that this was available.”

BFDI and ECIC’s programming for both early childhood professionals and parents provides a comprehensive system of educational and informational services, to set young children up for success.

“You want them to have a baseline proficiency so that they can succeed throughout their elementary years. If a student is behind when they arrive at kindergarten, it makes it that much more difficult for them to catch up with their peers,” BFDI Executive Vice President Nicole McKinney said. “Those first 8 years are critical.”