Deanna from Portland

My name is Deanna and I live in Portland, OR and have been a child care provider for 13 years in Multnomah Co., and Washington Co. for a couple of months. 

I own 3 centers in the PDX-metro area serving over 200 families. I’ve managed to stay open during COVID the whole time. I give scholarships for ERDC students but can only afford to offer a few to families who don’t meet the ERDC requirements. Right now, large chain providers threaten to push out local independent providers because they have the ability to absorb these costs, whereas independent providers can’t make up the difference to provide accessible care. 

I charge $1952/mo. for full time infant care. and I charge about the same as most centers of my size.  My materials fees are $200/year and a $150 registration fee and a deposit equivalent to one month’s care. I must absorb these costs if I take on ERDC clients. Fully funding ERDC will help bridge this gap between students who qualify for head start and students who may otherwise qualify for ERDC. This would help my program by helping me to be more inclusive of different economic backgrounds. 

I believe that having a strong IT department and having everything paperless will also provide an ease of using the ERDC program for parents and providers.  Sometimes we can’t track down parents to get them to sign the paperwork, so having it be Docusign would streamline the process and help parents use the program.  Providers don’t have this extra time to chase down parents. Having an IT department with chat representatives to help parents and providers will also help streamline the process so that our payments arrive on time. Many providers don’t accept ERDC because of late payments.

Though it doesn’t directly affect my center now, I started out as an in-home provider.  So, I know how important the provision of suspending the sprinkler requirement is to the success of new business start-ups.  Also, centers like mine need neighborhood in-home providers to refer clients to. This will help enable centers like mine to make referrals to quality local providers we trust.