Missoula Area Chamber Creates Innovative Models for Child Care Access

In spring of 2018, the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce (Mont.) identified lack of access to early learning and child care as a critical workforce issue. This led to the creation of the chamber’s Childcare Initiative. The initiative began by gathering information from local child care providers and employers to better understand the barriers to accessing child care. It was estimated that as many as 1,000 children in the Missoula metro area were on waitlists. In November 2018, the Chamber surveyed families in the region and received over 550 responses which confirmed access to affordable, quality early learning and child care was severely lacking and had caused 47 percent of respondents to scale back on or abandon their careers.

“Child care was obviously impacting the workforce, and as the largest business organization in Missoula, we needed to see if we could connect community partners to help address it,” said Kim Latrielle, president, Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce. The chamber, with the help of community and state partners, created seven different models to explore to expand child care and home-based programs:

1. Creating child care facilities that are housed inside a business for its employees.
2. Developing an existing large capacity child care facility for a single large employer.
3. Connecting two or more businesses to collaborate on creating a facility for their area of town.
4. Utilizing vacant schools to open new or expand existing facilities.
5. Incorporating child care facilities into current development projects.
6. Developing child care centers in shopping centers.
7. Partnering with those who left the child care industry with support to open their own in-home child care center.

Three of these strategies are currently moving forward: a local business opened its own on-site child care facility for its employees, an abandoned elementary school has been renovated to create a new child care facility for over 150 children, and Missoulians have partnered with franchises to create their own in-home centers. This progress has been critical considering that, in 2020, there was only one spot for every three children in need of child care in Missoula. 

In the fall of 2021, the Missoula Area Chamber began a partnership with ChildCare Resources of Missoula to launch the Associate Child Care Membership. This provides free chamber membership to child care providers for one year and gives them access to business resources and networking to further their own business growth.

This example of the Missoula Area Chamber demonstrates how chambers can cultivate community interest, bring together stakeholders and mobilize the business community to create solutions for both business and the workforce to increase the economic prosperity of the region overall.