ANNOUNCEMENTS - 7:45 AM
Missy Peifer, SHRMA President
PROGRAM - 8:00 - 9:00 AM
INSUFFICIENT CHILD CARE: Business Impacts and Supports
Karen Grimm-Thomas, Early Childhood Education Strategy Advisor
The Pennsylvania Key
DESCRIPTION/COURSE OVERVIEW
Join us and learn about the child care staffing crisis that is impacting Pennsylvania and the rest of the country. This session will address the causes of the crisis and discuss the negative economic impact it is having on individual workers, businesses, and local communities. We’ll outline some of the benefits that employers and community leaders can expect to see from supporting parenting workers and explore some case studies of successful Pennsylvania projects. You’ll leave with actionable steps that business and community leaders can take today to alleviate some of the problems, as well as resources for learning about and implementing more long-term strategies.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
- Why child care is considered a broken market
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The negative impacts that insufficient child care has on PA workers and businesses
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The benefits business can realize by supporting their workforces’ child care needs
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The resources available to help businesses looking to support the child care needs of their workforce
SPEAKER BIO
Karen Grimm-Thomas serves as the Early Childhood Education Strategy Advisor working in Support of Pennsylvania's Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) at the Pennsylvania Key. In this role, she leads the Creative Child Care Solutions (CCCS) initiative, consulting with Pennsylvania businesses, municipalities and counties interested in better understanding and supporting the child care needs of their employees and communities. Her technical assistance focuses on educating business and community leaders about the long-term, systemic vulnerabilities in our child care system that have led to it being widely viewed as a flawed market. The main goal of the initiative is to support businesses and communities to prioritize solutions that invest in local early learning systems to increase access to quality child care for all families.
Karen began her early childhood career working in Head Start programs in Pennsylvania including roles as a teacher, classroom mentor, education coordinator and training coordinator. She then spent 12 years as the Associate Director of the Pennsylvania Head Start Association where she provided training and technical assistance while advocating for Pennsylvania's Head Start and Early Head Start children, families and staff.
In 2017 Karen joined the team at OCDEL as Director of External Relations. In this role she led the Office’s coordinated, intentional approach to external engagement by interacting with interested parties to both improve their understanding of OCDEL policy and ensure that OCDEL's leadership team had a deeper understanding of how that policy was experienced when implemented in the field.
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This session has been submitted for recertification credits with SHRM and HRCI. Chapter members in good standing with their dues and non-members that have paid the nominal fee will receive these credits if in attendance for a minimum of 50 minutes of the program.
Login information for the Zoom session will be sent to you after registration is complete. Payments for non-members will be verified before confirming registration and sending zoom link. Payment instructions will be included in invoice.
