Support and Confidence Increased through MO-SECA FCC Networking

Julie Brown has had her family child care business in Greene County for 32 years. She has been licensed for the past 16 years. She was confident in her skills and ability to provide quality care for the children attending her family child care business. The business piece was left to when it was time to organize receipts to pay taxes each year. Julie had a family child care colleague who had already signed up for Missouri Supporting Early Childhood Administrators (MO-SECA) tell her, "You need to do this!" Julie's last child had left for college in the fall, so she could not think of another excuse for not participating. She looked at the training schedule and saw the titles. She thought they looked interesting and could probably help her learn to sustain her family care business better.  

The training and technical assistance (TA) provided by Lori Schumer helped Julie see the importance of the business side of her family child care. 

It gave her a new level of accountability and motivation. Lori would check in with Julie to provide a word of encouragement and see how she was doing on her action plans. Lori's support gave her the boost she needed to finish her action plans and be prepared for the training. Julie is still working on her budget, but she understands Rome was not built in a day. 

She is current on her receipts and continues to work on her budget to understand better where money is coming from and where it is going. As Julie attended the training sessions, she began to feel empowered to better manage her business and acknowledged, "I can do this!" She used to guesstimate her food spending. Julie would combine the child care business food purchases with her food purchases for her family. Now, she is focusing on being more precise about her child care food purchases to have more control over her expenses.

Julie thoroughly enjoyed the collaboration and networking provided through the training and technical assistance of the MO-SECA project. Julie remarked, "It was great collaborating with other family child care owners to discuss ideas and hear what was and was not working within their businesses." They also exchanged phone numbers to continue the collaboration beyond the training and after the cohort had concluded. Allowing family child care business owners to share ideas with others with the same lived experience was vital to the MO-SECA project.

From these discussions, Julie changed her family child care handbook to clarify policies she already had in place. She said, "We encouraged each other, building our confidence to better sustain our businesses."

As a result of the training, TA, and collaboration, Julie made two significant changes. She purchased liability insurance and is working on building a retirement fund for herself. Julie had thought her homeowner's insurance would cover any accidents at her family child care. She learned it would not. Several years ago, a child was injured in a freak accident at the child care. The family chose not to make a claim. The liability insurance has now given her peace of mind in securing her business.  

Julie continues to research and explore options for retirement plans. It is a goal for 2024 to have started a retirement plan so that she will have something when she retires in 10 years.  

Julie is glad she participated in MO-SECA. She knows she is not where she wants to be, but the project has provided the motivation and tools to help her better sustain her family child care business.  

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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