MO-SECA Enhanced Confidence to Make Policy Changes

Susann Buie has been operating her Greene County family child care business for seven years, being licensed for the past five years. Susann enrolled in Missouri Supporting Early Childhood Administrators (MO-SECA) to take advantage of the free continuing education, as she is always eager to learn new ideas and find strategies to better her business practices. Susann stated, "Participating in the MO-SECA project gave me fresh insight on involving the local community in my family child care business. It also provided added confidence to make positive changes in my policies." Susann's most impactful change was adjusting her work/life balance to include more vacation time. She changed her policies to include all federal holidays as paid holidays, added another week of paid vacation, and gave herself a minimum of one paid three-day weekend a month. Susan did not stop there. As a result of the training topics and discussions, she updated her handbook to cover issues that she had not previously addressed to make it more comprehensive.

Susann found the training very beneficial since it focused only on family child care businesses. Learning about the break-even point and how it related to her business budget and seeing her county’s tuition data gave her the confidence to increase her rates for 2024. Lori Schumer was the Trainer and Technical Assistance (TA) Specialist for Susann’s cohort. 

The training and TA helped Susann better understand that keeping her budget at the forefront was essential to her business rather than just a good idea.

Lori thoroughly enjoyed working with Susann. She appreciated Susann’s boldness in advocating for herself and making the needed changes regarding the additional paid vacation days to care for herself. Susann confidently explained to her families the policy changes from a business perspective. The changes were made to ensure she could best care for herself and her family and continue providing quality care for each of their children. The families were receptive to the policy changes, with none leaving.

Susann is grateful for the opportunity to participate in the MO-SECA project. She encourages her child care peers to participate in future MO-SECA offerings. She said, “You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. I was privileged to be a part of a group of providers who freely shared and encouraged each other. I developed new relationships and strengthened established ones.”

If you are a family child care business that has participated in MO-SECA with a story to tell, please contact Lauri Choate, Director of Training at lauri@mochildcareaware.org.

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