For Scarlett Loomas of Sikeston, the logistics of obtaining day care for her children were half the battle.
She would drive southeast for 30 minutes each morning to East Prairie in Mississippi County to drop her kids off at childcare. Then she would drive another 40 minutes farther south to work in Portageville in New Madrid County.
At the end of the day, her parents would pick the kids up and take them to meet Loomas at a truck stop on Interstate 55 so she could drive them home.
“I was just lucky to have parents who could pick them up and meet me,” Loomas told The Independent.
Now Loomas, a development administrator at the Sikeston-based Delta Area Economic Opportunity Corporation, is preparing for the March launch of a mentorship program for prospective in-home childcare providers in Mississippi County.
The goal is to increase affordability and access.
The average annual cost of child care for an infant in Missouri is $13,780, according to Child Care Aware of Missouri. For a 4-year-old, it’s $9,568.
And 78 of Missouri’s 114 counties are childcare deserts, where there are more than three times as many children ages 5 and under as there are licensed childcare slots.
Parents in Mississippi County wanted more childcare slots in smaller-scale, home settings, Loomas said, instead of larger centers more likely to be far from their home and work. Parents working outside the county often face late fees if they pick up their kids outside of a 30-minute window.
But Loomas said “people are lucky when the drive time from job to home is only 30 minutes.”
“Every minute matters,” she said.
The insight about parents’ demand for in-home child care emerged from a community planning project led by Kids Win Missouri. The project is designed to bring together providers, community organizations, local businesses, schools and parents to identify local early childhood needs and come up with practical solutions.
Representatives from many of the 19 communities across Missouri that have been involved in the project gathered at an early childhood care and education summit hosted by Kids Win in Jefferson City last week. They underlined the need for creative solutions to childcare scarcity and unaffordability as state and federal funding sources become shakier.
It’s a message Traci Lawrence, executive director of the Community Action Partnership of Northeast Missouri in Kirksville, highlighted as she encouraged relationship-building between providers, local businesses and community groups.
“It’s no longer lucrative or smart for us just to rely on a state subsidy for payment for parents, because when childcare costs are outpacing wages, there’s no way that even people who are making really good money can afford it,” Lawrence said.
Limited subsidies
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education announced last week that beginning March 1, it will start a waiting list for families newly applying to the state’s childcare subsidy program, which is funded through a federal block grant. The department cited record demand, saying the number of families receiving the subsidy has increased by 19% since January 2025.
Missouri received $238 million in federal subsidy funding during fiscal year 2025. The subsidy is available only to low-income families, who earn up to 150% of the federal poverty level. That’s $49,500 for a family of four, which is equivalent to one person earning $23.80 an hour for a year of full time work.
Families enrolled for the subsidy who experience a modest increase in earnings can still qualify for a reduced transitional subsidy.
A study by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska estimated that the lack of affordable childcare in Missouri could cost the state between $6.2 billion and $9.4 billion in lost wages, productivity and tax revenue over the next decade.
Cost-share model
The same community planning project that inspired Loomas’ work in Mississippi County led Kids Win and Child Care Aware of Missouri to launch an initiative in 2025 to support families who earn too much to qualify for the state subsidy but can’t afford childcare as costs and demand rise.
That initiative, Child Care Works, funded at $2.5 million in the state budget, enrolls employers to share in the cost of childcare, with the rationale that the companies, employees and community benefit from investment in childcare.
Casey Hanson, deputy director at Kids Win Missouri, told The Independent that Child Care Works is designed to address a common problem of childcare affordability across the state, while paying attention to specific local needs.
“The work in the communities led to, ‘Okay, this could be a potential policy solution to consider that could help a lot of our communities in all different areas of the state,” Hanson said.
Families earning more than 150% but less than 555% of the federal poverty level — up to $183,150 for a family of four — who are not receiving other child care assistance can qualify.
Employers pay a flat fee per participating employee, based on their region. The state pays up to 40% of the cost, depending on the family’s income, region and type of care. Families pay the rest, with the lowest-income families paying as little as a quarter of the cost. Money can also come from philanthropy.
In the Kansas City area, an employer would pay $5,226 per year for infant or toddler care at a licensed center, with the state paying $2,496 to $9,984 depending on family income. Those rates decrease for preschool and school age care.
Hanson said 34 families currently receiving benefits pay an average of 38% of child care costs. Employers are paying 34% and the state is footing 28% of the bill.
For the average participating family with an infant in child care, that’s a savings of more than $8,500 a year.
Hanson said it’s exciting to see these results.
“What a great policy that is literally putting money back in parents’ pockets with all the increased costs of everything else, so that maybe they have a little bit less stress while they’re also in the process of raising a zero- to five-year-old,” Hanson said.
Making the jump
Gov. Mike Kehoe recommended $2.5 million for Child Care Works in his fiscal year 2027 spending plan — the same amount included in the budget for the current year.
Hanson said she hopes continued funding, along with the program’s successes so far, will persuade more employers to join the project.
“We live in the Show-Me State,” Hanson said. “Employers don’t want to be the first one to jump. They want to see [that] this is working for other people too.”
Kehoe’s budget plan would also renew funding for child care innovation grants to start or expand child care programs at $10 million for fiscal year 2027.
Jenn Vaughn, director of Head Start at the Community Action Partnership of Northeast Missouri in Kirksville, said it was important to cultivate community buy-in before applying for an innovation grant. Her organization is getting ready to open 32 additional infant and toddler slots in a building they are remodeling thanks to that funding.
“If we didn’t have 100% [buy-in] from our community, we were not assuming 100% of the risk,” Vaughn said.
Lawrence agreed.
“We had to make sure that we fought as hard as we could to make sure that we were going to be sustainable,” she said.
Vaughn and Lawrence, who both previously worked for Children’s Division, told The Independent that Adair County’s lack of affordable childcare made it more difficult to find foster care placements for children in protective custody.
Vaughn recalled trying to find childcare slots to allow prospective foster parents to take in children.
“More often than not, you can’t,” Vaughn said. “So it falls through, and then those kids might be placed farther and farther from the family, which then poses a barrier for reunification.”
While Vaughn and Lawrence’s organization hasn’t yet applied to become part of Child Care Works, Lawrence said they’re talking with local businesses about the possibility.
“When you’re trying to figure out innovative ways to increase the capacity for childcare,” Lawrence said, “you’re going to listen to whoever comes along and says, ‘Hey, I think we might have a solution.”