Employer Resources

Child Care for Businesses

For both local businesses and young families, it pays to have accessible, affordable child care in our community. It's hard enough to staff a small rural business without having to worry about employees having to quit or reduce hours due to child care challenges. In a January 2024 Child Care Landscape Analysis Report for Mobridge and Walworth County, ninety-two percent of responding employers strongly agreed that the availability of affordable, quality child care was important to the productivity of their workforce, and 76.9% shared that some of their employees had quit or reduced their hours in the past year due to child care challenges.

Besides periodically surveying employees about child care challenges and the need for child-care related benefits, we have some quick wins for employers that want to address this challenge in partnership with their employees and step up as family-friendly local employers. 

Employer Child Care Toolkit

This downloadable PDF includes ten ways that local employees can help employees with young children. We are currently working to create a complete employer child care toolkit with local child care data, child-care related benefits and their potential impact, information on pre-tax Flexible Spending Accounts (Dependent Care FSAs), the Employer Provided Child Care Tax Credit, and one-page flyers for new hires that will help employees connect with local resources and child care providers.

Adopt a Child Care Program

Join the fun, build goodwill, and make a direct, positive impact on an area child care provider and the families they serve! As a member of the Adopt a Child Care Program, you will receive a wish list quarterly, semiannually or annually from a local child care provider and have the opportunity to work with employees to gather donated consumables like arts and craft supplies, for your chosen provider. In exchange, you'll recieve thank you projects developed by children in the adopted program. The children and your customers alike with enjoying seeing their artwork displayed in store windows or customer counters. Sign up here. 

Friends of Child Care Program

Connect with local child care providers as a volunteer guest speaker to provide a little respite to the provider and a lot of excitement to the children in their care. Volunteers in this program visit providers and complete a short 30-60 minute supervised activity or speak with children about an interesting topic. Have a job that young children would love to learn about? Turn it into an event! For example, a police officer could come talk to children about what they do, read a book about safety around cars or strangers, and give children a tour of their patrol car. Sign up here.