DAYTON — Hundreds of community leaders met Thursday to discuss the need for child care at the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce’s Child Care Summit.
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According to Child Aware, more than 3.5 million children need child care, but don’t have any where to go.
News Center 7′s Xavier Hershovitz spoke with business leaders as they discussed solutions.
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“Childcare has always been a top priority for us,” President and CEO of Groundwork Ohio Lynanne Gutierrez said.
Groundwork Ohio is working with the local business community to address childcare needs.
“I think the pandemic really accelerated the recognition of that among the business community,” Gutierrez said.
The goal of the summit was to bring together lawmakers, business leaders and non-profits.
“Workforce attraction and retention is the number one issue for businesses, and when you peel hack the layers of the onion to figure out what are those workforce challenges, childcare rises to the top,” President and CEO of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce Chris Kershner said.
Kershner says childcare is an issue that businesses have to help address.
“Having access to childcare, affordable childcare, quality childcare, is impacting worker’s productivity and ability to be at the office and to deliver for our employers,” Kershner said. “So if we can solve that problem, it’s going to help address our workforce issue that we have.”
Childcare has been a long and growing issue, and has been a focus for Gov. Mike DeWine, who addressed the summit.
“I think we’re making some progress in regard to childcare,” Gov. DeWine said. “We’ve been able, with the help of the legislature, to raise the amount of money that we’re putting into childcare in the state of Ohio and subsidizing working families who could not really afford childcare. Do we need to do more yet? We always need to do more in this area.”
Around 300 people showed up to the summit, each hoping to go their part to address the issue.
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