Currents

New and Newsworthy from OppEx.

Health Insurance for the Early Childhood Workforce: Strategies for Leveraging the Affordable Care Act and More

By Sharon Easterling, Opportunities Exchange
and Ashley LiBetti, Pillars Research and Strategy | July, 2024

The Affordable Care Act is a game changer for the early childhood sector. This Issue Brief highlights both the Individual Marketplace as well Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) as viable alternatives to the private health insurance route. It offers examples of innovative health care models, ancillary medical benefits, public sector strategies, resources on finding a benefits broker, and more.

Worried About Implementing New CCDF Rules? Modern Technology Can Help.

By Louise Stoney | June, 2024

New rules for implementation of the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) offer myriad opportunities to improve services for children, families and early care and education (ECE) providers. By harnessing the power of modern technology, states can implement these changes effectively, efficiently and in ways that are user-friendly for families and service providers. A new issue brief from Opportunities Exchange highlights many of those opportunities.

Iowa Leads the Way:  How Modern Technology Can Improve Access to High-Quality Child Care

By Louise Stoney | July, 2023

NEW Issue Brief on ground-breaking work in Iowa  that links billing and reporting for publicly funded child care to the automated Child Care Managment Systems providers use everyday to manage their businesses.

Retirement Planning: How Shared Service Alliances and Intermediaries Can Help

By Louise Stoney and Gary Romano | March, 2023

Retirement benefits are an important part of any compensation strategy, yet this benefit is rarely available in child care settings, and rarely included in systemic strategies to boost teacher compensation. This issue brief describes potential retirement strategies for staff in center- and home-based care along with ways that Shared Service Alliances can serve as change agents.

The Early Childhood Workforce and the Urgency of Now

By Sharon Easterling | December, 2022

Addressing the workforce crisis in ECE is our greatest challenge. This Issue Brief identifies strategies for addressing compensation and benefits while exploring the roles of both practitioners working in programs as well system reforms.

Bridging The Data Gap: Diverse Delivery Requires 21st Century Technology

By Louise Stoney | January 2022

Successfully scaling ECE hinges on what the field calls diverse delivery—tapping services available in a wide range of locations, including schools, community-based settings, workplaces and private homes. Implementing this important goal will require linked, 21st century data systems that include a wide array of services in diverse settings. This issue brief underscores the challenges and opportunities of forging a new approach to strategic, comprehensive and linked ECE data.

Staffed Family Child Care Networks: Lessons from a National Community of Practice

By Amy Friedlander | December 2021

Building Staffed Family Child Care Networks (SFCCNs) is a complex task. Through a year-long Community of Practice with 7 SFCCN teams, OppEx gleaned important lessons learned and best practices to guide scaling and replication of this work. As described in this issue brief key issues focus on Network flexibility and adaptability, data collection and analysis, use of automation, value proposition and ongoing communication, advocacy, collaboration, and provider voice.

A New Day for Health Care Options: Affordable Health Insurance for all ECE Practitioners isNow Possible

By Louise Stoney | October 2021

Making sure that early care and education practitioners can access health care is a top priority. This issue brief describes three ways that Shared Service Alliances and other intermediaries can help.

Spearheading Systems Change: the Oregon Story

By Martha McDonald | August 2021

Boosting the supply of high-quality care for infants and toddlers is a multi-faceted process. A host of changes—in state-level policy and finance as well as program-level administration—are needed. Opportunities Exchange has worked closely with public and private sector leaders, funders, and implementors to shepherd change across the field. Over the past two years, we have provided significant support to leaders in the State of Oregon. A recent case study, Building Back Better: Reinventing Oregon’s Child Care Industry, by Martha McDonald, describes this effort.

Viewing Compensation Through a Shared Services Lens

By Louise Stoney | July 2021

National, state, and local organizations are united behind the goal of increased compensation for the ECE workforce. Addressing this vexing challenge will require a new level of thinking, one that goes beyond calls for increased rates, better payment practices or wage subsidies to reach the root problem of scale. In short, if we want teachers to earn decent wages and have meaningful jobs, we need to challenge some long-held beliefs about program structure, roles, and responsibilities and embrace lessons from Shared Services.

OPINION: A shared “back office” — and 21st century technology — could save small child care businesses

By Louise Stoney for The Hechinger Report | April 2021

The business model for small child care programs is fundamentally flawed, but banding together may help providers operate more efficiently and reach the scale they need to weather financial storms.

Louise Stoney’s Four-Part Blog series on Family.com

March-April 2021

Louise Stoney presents a three-part formula to help you track and manage your finances in the child care business. Take an in-depth look at each of the three goals: achieving full enrollment, collecting all your fees and ensuring your tuition covers your costs and how you can achieve these goals in your own child care setting.