Groundwork Ohio Roadshow 2026: Richland County
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Groundwork Ohio’s 2026 Roadshow continued on September 1 as the team traveled to Richland County for a child care site visit at The Child Development Center, followed by a roundtable discussion hosted in partnership with Richland Source and the Richland County Women’s Fund Foundation in Ovalwood Hall at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus.
Throughout the day, Groundwork Ohio listened to policymakers, business leaders, and early childhood professionals discuss the child care landscapes in Richland, Knox, and Ashland counties. This conversation touched on how child care impacts the community, how employers are supporting their employees through creative partnerships and options like flexible scheduling, and how local and state government can assist in the efforts around child care so that more working families can join the workforce.
The conversations highlighted where current support exists in this area, while also describing the barriers that families face when accessing care for their young children.
Seeing Early Childhood Education in Action:
Ohio House Representative Marilyn John (R-Shelby) joined Groundwork as well as the leadership of North Central State College and OSU Mansfield on a tour of The Childhood Development Center, co-located on the shared campus and providing area families with high quality early learning opportunities. Center Director Wendy Thompson described the staff's approach to engaging young learners through small ratios, individualized programming that meets the specific needs of each child, partnerships with home-based programming that starts as early as the prenatal period, and referrals to early intervention services that help meet the needs of young children before they start kindergarten.
The site serving 74 children includes vegetable gardens that enable children to experience growing their own food to taste test. Classrooms are multi-age, which allows siblings to grow and learn alongside one another. The families attending the Center are from diverse socio-economic backgrounds; some children are enrolled through Early Head Start, others through private pay, and still more through Publicly Funded Child Care or Child Care Choice Vouchers. The family engagement, mixed-age classrooms, and robust staff retention lead to a family-like environment where children and families can thrive.
What We Heard in Richland County
The conversations throughout the day made one thing clear: child care is essential infrastructure for Richland County and the surrounding region. Local policymakers, business leaders, early childhood professionals, and community advocates described how access to affordable, reliable care affects whether parents can work, what jobs they can accept, and whether businesses can find and retain employees. For many families, the challenge is not simply finding a child care provider, but finding care that is affordable, available when they need it, and able to meet their child’s individual needs.
“We just bought a home and had no choice but to wait to start a family. I was almost 30 before having my first child.”
For families, affordability and availability continue to shape difficult decisions. Participants described long waitlists, limited infant and toddler care, a shortage of care outside traditional first-shift hours, and barriers for families of children with special needs. Some families are turning to informal arrangements, social media, relatives, or reducing their hours at work when licensed care is unavailable or unaffordable.
“We had to push our 4-year-old into the school system because we couldn’t afford to have two children in child care at the same time. We ended up holding her back a year later, but at the time, it was what worked for our family. We just couldn’t afford it.”
These choices can have lasting consequences, particularly for women whose career advancement, earnings, and retirement savings may be affected when they reduce hours or step away from work to care for their children.
At the same time, providers are facing their own set of challenges. Staff recruitment and retention, low wages, limited benefits, rising operating costs, compliance requirements, and insurance costs all make it difficult for programs to maintain capacity. Head Start providers and other early childhood professionals described struggling to fill classrooms even when families are waiting for care. Participants also noted that the workforce shortage extends beyond child care itself: businesses are struggling to find employees because parents cannot find care that works with their schedules.
“We have the space for more children in our center, but we cannot support the staffing due to wages. If funding existed for staffing, we could absolutely support all classrooms and capacity.”
The roundtable also highlighted opportunities for communities and employers to be part of the solution. Participants discussed employer-supported child care benefits, dependent care assistance programs, greater workplace flexibility, on-site child care, partnerships with schools and career centers, and expanded support for home-based providers. Others pointed to promising local efforts, including leadership of the Richland County Women’s Fund. Participants also explored innovative approaches such as multigenerational child care, opportunities for high school students to enter the early childhood workforce, and partnerships that bring multiple services together for families of young children with special needs.
Ultimately, participants called for a shift in how communities think about child care.
“Child care is more than a benefit for individual families and more than “babysitting”—it is a critical part of Ohio’s workforce and economic infrastructure.”
Richland County leaders emphasized the importance of continuing the conversation, supporting the professionals who provide care, engaging employers and community organizations, and ensuring that working families are not forced to choose between employment and the care their children need.
Learn More
Learn more about the experiences of young children and families in Richland County:
