When Leelanau County's Patricia Soutas-Little became "gravely concerned" about the lack of infant and toddler child care in her community, she and an all-volunteer band of residents set out to create innovative, sustainable child care for working families in Leelanau County.
But in the wake of a handful of day care centers closing across the peninsula, Soutas-Little, a previous county commissioner and former faculty member in Michigan State University's college of engineering, set out to create an Infant & Toddler Childcare Startup (ITCS), a team of volunteer professionals offering personal coaching and providing assistance with everything from navigating state and local licensing regulations to financial forecasting and marketing.ITCS was also seeded by a $318,000 grant from Lansing-based Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC) to provide startup expenses for things like toys, cribs, and home renovations.
Many wanted to give a child care business a go but, for various reasons, not in their own homes.
Then came a serendipitous conversation with ECIC's Child Care Innovation Fund Director, Joan Blough, who "'opened the door to the [LARA] Child Care Licensing Bureau," says Soutas-Little.
Now, an individual child care provider can legally operate a 'home
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Caroline Diehl is a serial social entrepreneur in the impact media space. She is Executive Chair and Founder of the UK’s only charitable and co-operatively owned national broadcast television channel Together TV, the leading broadcaster for social change runs a national TV channel in the UK and digital platform which helps people find inspiration to do good in their lives and communities.