Last month, business leaders and child care advocates from several states met on Zoom. Representing Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia, they met to discuss a new child care model called “Try-Share” that is gaining attention in their respective regions and across the country.
The cost-sharing model, in which the state government, employers and employees each pay one-third of child care costs, was first introduced in Michigan in 2021 and is the most advanced. But the program is so popular that other states, including New York, North Carolina, and Kentucky, have already secured funding for their own adaptations of the program.
The Zoom meeting was an opportunity to share how their efforts are unfolding.
Read the full story about Michigan’s TriShare program and the families it helps.
“We strive to learn from and inspire each other,” said Safiyah Jackson, chief strategy officer at the North Carolina Partnership for Children, which is helping develop the TriShare pilot.
Each state is experimenting with slightly different iterations of the model, but broadly speaking they are all trying to accomplish the same goals. That means making child care more affordable for families, improving employee retention and bringing more people, especially women, back into the workforce. .
States are in various stages of planning and implementation. Nearly three years into the pilot and now in 59 of 83 counties, Michigan will roll out the program statewide later this year, expanding to an estimated 5,000 households by 2028. Preparations are underway. Meanwhile, Kentucky’s pilot implementation began in July 2023, and North Carolina’s pilot implementation began in July 2023. It is in the design stage and on track to open this summer. Noble County, Indiana (known as the first local adoption of the tri-share model) has been running its program for a full year.
We spoke with people in Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina to understand how their respective tri-share programs work and whether this model can be successful in different environments.
Noble County, Indiana
Jenna Anderson first heard about Tri-Share in the summer of 2022.
As an early childhood cooperation coordinator Thrive by 5Anderson, whose organization works to improve the quality and access of early care and education in Noble and LaGrange counties in northeastern Indiana, was looking for a solution that would work in the region.
“Some employers came to us and said, ‘We have a problem,'” she recalls. “We needed to do something to address capacity, quality and affordability. [Tri-Share] It was easiest to try to address one of these three issues. ”
She asked Noble County Commissioners for $50,000. pilot try share, we believe it will support 15-25 children and last about a year. Funding was awarded in January 2023.
Initial enthusiasm was strong. A local bank was willing to fund 15 children, regardless of price. This means the bank will pay her one-third of the employee’s childcare costs. However, once the program was launched and employees applied, no one was deemed eligible. Some bank employees exceeded the income limit, which is 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or the equivalent of $90,000 for a family of four. Some people lived across county lines. Anderson said many of the employees who work in Noble County live in surrounding areas, and one of the conditions of the funding was that it be used only for Noble County residents.
To get around this challenge, Thrive by 5 worked backwards to market to families in Noble County and get employers into the program, which also meant employers had to hire new employees. It led to gridlock, including not having local control to approve benefits.
“As someone who is trying to help these employees, it’s frustrating,” Anderson said. “I’m hitting a brick wall with my employer.”
The first two families successfully enrolled in the program in September. Both are single parents who work in local school districts.
The next few months were spent just the two of us. But recently, county commissioners made changes that allow Thrive by 5 to contribute a portion of county funds if employers face certain barriers.
With this change, the program will now include two more families, both of whom will now receive a 33 percent discount on their care fees instead of the full 66 percent. Some families receive this as “gap” coverage while their employer is enrolled in TriShare. The other company receives an indefinite exception because it cannot participate in Tri-Share because its employer is part of a global company and cannot manage employee benefits locally.
Anderson says she is grateful for the learning experience. She also acknowledged that Tri-Share is not very effective at the county level. “It’s too restrictive,” she says. “We need more space.”
But she has no regrets.
“You have to try something,” she says. “We didn’t know if this program would work. It does work on a partial level (because it actively helps some families with child support). We also had questions about why it wouldn’t work locally. It also gave me some insight.”
She hopes the program can gain funding and approval to expand regionally to an 11-county partnership in northeast Indiana.
A year later, she’s clearly surprised that she still has about $43,000 of her original $50,000. “This money is going to be gone soon,” she remembers thinking, she says with a laugh. However, it still exists and is ready to help more families if the program is started.
kentucky
Charles Orr said Kentucky is far from replicating Michigan’s tri-share program.
“It was like ships coming and going at night,” said Orr, executive director of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Center for Policy Research.
The two states’ programs are similar but uniquely developed. Aull says that as Tri-Share was rolled out, the organization became aware of it and learned from it. (He also admits that “tryshare” has more ring to it than “.”Employee childcare support system” — or ECCAP — as the Kentucky equivalent is known.)
In Kentucky, as in many states in recent years, employers are beginning to recognize the link between inaccessible and unaffordable child care and labor market participation, Orr said.
“Employers are actively investing in being part of the solution,” said Orr, who helped design ECCAP’s policy and advocated for its passage in the state Legislature.
The idea was that ECCAP would pick up where the state’s child care subsidy program left off, much like Michigan envisioned with TriShare.
Kentucky has the largest family income 85 percent People at the state median income (SMI) receive discounted or free child care through: Subsidy system.
“Once you’re a family that makes 86 percent of SMI, all of a sudden, magically, you can’t afford child care,” Orr explains. “We wanted to help” families who were essentially falling off a benefit cliff.
The main difference between Michigan’s Tri-Share program and Kentucky’s ECCAP program is that Michigan has a fixed contribution, with all employers paying at least one-third. Kentucky has no minimums or maximums.
There are other distinctions as well. Kentucky does not have an intermediary to manage the program like Michigan’s regional “hubs” do. Advantages of ECCAP decreases as household income increasesHowever, the state will subsidize up to 50 percent of employer contributions above 180 percent of the state’s median income, or about $140,000 for a family of four. Because of this special entitlement, employers feel more comfortable offering the program because they feel it’s less exclusive, Orr said.
“That means it’s available to everyone, but the bulk of the benefits go to low-income and middle-income households,” he says.
Kentucky General Assembly passed bill It was established in ECCAP in spring 2022 and was initially funded with $15 million. (By comparison, a pilot in Michigan received $1.1 million and a pilot in New York received $1.1 million.) Obtained 4.8 million dollars. )
The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which administers the program, spent a year designing and planning the pilot before implementing it statewide in July 2023.
As of January 1, 35 employers have signed on, covering child care costs for a total of 133 children.
“With a program like this, you want to start slow,” Orr says, noting that a planned launch gives you time to learn, take in feedback, and make changes.
For the most part, Orr says the first six months went smoothly, but with one big caveat. That means the program only works in areas where child care is available.
“If you have a family who can find child care and an employer who is willing to participate, this works really well,” he explains. “But if you have an employer and you don’t have child care, that’s a problem. How do you expand the availability of child care in the first place?”
Orr added that there is a growing belief that some of the funding for ECCAP could be diverted to help establish more family-based child care programs. The program is run in the caregiver’s home and may be particularly useful in remote areas. Center-based care may not be practical. Another idea is to work with local governments to change zoning codes to make them more accommodating for center and home child care, he added.
“When you think about engaging with employers, most policymakers say, ‘Oh, let’s give them a tax credit,'” Orr said. “this [program] is trying to deviate from that and do something different, something more innovative. We are working to ensure that employers and the public sector work together to not only reduce some costs for working families, but also expand access to childcare in the future. ”
north carolina
Although still in its early stages of development, North Carolina’s tri-share program is perhaps the closest thing to the original model.
North Carolina Children’s Partnership (NCPC) Granted $900,000 With approval from the state General Assembly, a two-year pilot will be conducted at three regional locations.
The two-year period began last July and NCPC selected the first three hubs in late January. Safiyah Jackson, chief strategy officer who is leading NCPC’s efforts on the tri-share model, said she expects the pilot to officially begin in June or July. She says that now that the three hubs have been announced, they are moving out of the “discovery” phase and into the “design” phase.
Like Michigan, North Carolina uses regional hubs as intermediaries between the state, employers, and employees. Jackson feels that North Carolina may have an inherent advantage in this regard because the organization has existing partnerships with many county-based organizations that go back decades.
“There’s a facile assumption that North Carolina has already solved some of the early startup challenges that Michigan experienced because of its infrastructure,” Jackson said.
north carolina We are planning to hire a central administrator. This is to coordinate regional hubs. This is a change Michigan recently decided to make. That will likely be a third party, such as an employee benefits administrator.
Mr Jackson is also keen to ensure that childcare workers are supported and retained through this programme. After piloting in his three regions in Michigan, the report said, about half of the child care providers participating in TriShare said the program improved their financial security. evaluation report Provider sustainability is listed as one of three core goals in both Michigan and North Carolina, so Jackson wants to aim higher.
“We have a better opportunity than the state of Michigan to do that,” she says of the provider’s goals.
It’s too early to say how North Carolina’s pilot plan will diverge from Michigan’s, but some ideas are already being considered: North Carolina will use businesses to cover some of its administrative costs. (up to 9 percent of state funds may go toward donations). North Carolina, like Kentucky, could use a graduated scale in which financial support decreases as income increases. And states may require minimum contributions from employers.
For now, business and early childhood leaders who met last month plan to continue their informal meetings to discuss TryShare. And that number may be increasing. Recently, Jackson spoke with advocates in another state that is considering implementing a child care model for its residents.