Strategies shared on how to expand access to early child care in LaGrange County

LAGRANGE COUNTY, Ind. -- Community leaders of LaGrange County met with experts during a summit on Tuesday to further their efforts in expanding local access to early child care.

The county is currently falling short of Indiana’s state score for early learning access. Leaders and experts say the largest issue that is hurting this score is inadequate capacity.

Existing early child care programs in the county are only able to serve about twenty-five percent of children, ages five and younger, who may need these programs.

“We've been doing some work all around the state to really explore what is the state of access and we think about that in terms of four different things. First of all, are there enough seats for children to be in, is there quality to those seats, are they affordable for families,” said Maureen Weber, President and CEO of Early Learning Indiana.

Weber also noted that she hopes her organization’s “Closing the Gap” program will generate $100,000 in grants to improve community access to early child care.