Heather Clark has juggled working full-time for an insurance agency and caring for her young daughter for the past five years.
“When you have a kid at home, you can’t answer the phones, and you
can’t have that personal interaction,” said Clark, who often works from home. “And my job requires that.”
In July, Clark became one of the first of 28 parents to join We
st Virginia’s new pilot program that subsidizes child care by allowing employers and the state to cover some of the costs.
But the program is small compared to the size of West Virginia’s child care crisis, and it won’t survive if lawmakers don’t step up with more money.
Clark is now saving $80 a week on three days of child care for her five-year-old daughter, Gabby.
“It just helps ease the gap between making bills and getting to save,” she said.
Clark isn’t alone.
Finding affordable child care is one of the biggest hurdles for West Virginia families finding and keeping jobs, business leaders say.
West Virginia suffers from a lack of providers, low pay for child care workers and insufficient funding subsidies to help low-income families. More than 25,000 West Virgini
children don’t have care because providers don’t have enough slots.
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And lawmakers haven’t done much to help families or child care providers, other than implementing new tax credits for employers and families.
The program is helping parents like Clark afford child care, but it’s only available in eight counties and is expected to end in August 2026 — or sooner, if the nu
mber of parents participating exceeds the limited budget.
That leaves lawmakers with a choice: expand the program or let it fizzle out and go back to the drawing board for West Virginia’s child care crisis.
The new approach asks employers to pay a portion of an employee’s child care costs. Depending on pa
rents’ income, the state matches the employer’s contribution by as little as 50% up to 100%. Parents pay the rest.
Wonderschool, a child care company, is spearheading West Virginia’s program, launched earlier this year in
collaboration with the state’s small business development agency.
The program is funded by a two-year, $1.9 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission and $495,000 from the state Department of Economic Development.
So far, the program has enrolled 14 employers and 17 child care providers in eight counties: Putnam, Wirt, Lincol
n, Boone, Kanawha, Jackson, Roane and Mason. There are about 40 new employees in the process of enrolling.