Sarah Song is the owner and primary child care provider for The Learning Nest family child care in National City. While Sarah’s in-home child care provides children and families with a close-knit, family-like experience, her enrollment capacity is 15 children.

For providers like Sarah who wish to expand their care, this means they must seek out a larger facility, creating new and expensive obstacles.

“In a dream scenario, it would not be at my house. It would be in a facility,” she said.

The challenges to growth go beyond the simple A, B, Cs of business. Sarah points out that many providers face challenges, such as providing a certain number of dedicated parking spaces or installing a fire marshal-approved sprinkler system throughout the entire facility. For providers, this requirement can cost tens of thousands of dollars; funds that most providers cannot afford out of pocket.

To help providers expand care, grants are available to cover or split the cost of these requirements, but the process itself can leave providers hanging in the balance.

“If you are planning on getting a grant, you actually won’t know if you get the grant until you probably already need it.”

So what do providers need to help them grow into larger facilities? Sarah suggests that the entire community become part of the solution, including companies that own large commercial spaces that meet the requirements.

“They could make sure they have at least half the facility up to code for child care or health care, because both of those have similar requirements,” Sarah said. “We need to invest in child care and child care providers because it’s a very necessary thing for all of our community.”