LOA, Utah — Young families in Wayne County have had to make some hard choices about how to work and take care of their kids.
Some residents in the southeastern Utah community — which is one of four counties with no access to licensed child care in the state — have extended family who can step up to help during the workday. Others are able to bring their kids to work with them or work from home. And still other parents have decided to go part time or quit jobs they’d rather keep.
"Everyone has their story,” said Makayla Barton, a Loa resident who resigned from her position as an advanced EMT earlier this year because she couldn’t find child care. “And what it all trickles down to in the end is, ‘Who’s going to watch my kids?’”
Loryn Morgan, a fellow Loa resident and mother of four, brings her children to work with her at Blackburn Propane because of the lack of options. She said daycare is one of the first things that comes to mind when residents are asked what’s missing in the county.
“There's so many kids and there's so many parents that need it,” she said, “and it's just not available.”
But after struggling for years, parents in the area may finally get some relief, as a new daycare center currently under construction in Loa is expected to open soon with space for around 28 children.
Neither Kailee nor Jaden Blackburn, the sibling duo currently working on renovating a family-owned building for the space, have previous experience in child care. But “we just saw a really big need for it in the county,” Kailee Blackburn said.
“Nobody has been able to have the resources or the funds to do it,” she added in a recent interview with FOX 13 News from the site of the new daycare. “And then we had this building and we were trying to decide what we should do with it. So we thought this would be a useful way to help the community.”
Since the days when the daycare was just a “rumor,” Kailee Blackburn said she and her brother have heard from dozens of residents who want to bring their children when it opens.
“I have the worry that we're gonna have to turn some people away because we won't have enough room to fit everybody,” she said. “And hopefully that's not the case. But it seems like there is such a big need here.”
Aside from Wayne County, there are three other counties in Utah — Daggett, Piute and Rich — that also have no licensed child care options. The percentage of working families with young children in those areas ranges from around 41% in Rich County to about 64% in Wayne County, according to a recent Utah Childcare Solutions and Workplace Productivity Plan.
While rural Utah is uniquely affected, parents across the state also face challenges accessing child care. In 2019, some 77% of the state’s residents lived in a child care desert, according to the Center for American Progress, which defines those as areas “where there are too few licensed slots for the number of children who need care.”
These child care challenges — which some legislators have called a “crisis” — cost the state around $1.36 billion annually, according to a 2023 estimate from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Wayne County residents discuss the benefits a new daycare could have for local businesses:
Wayne County, home to Capitol Reef National Park, has struggled to bring in new businesses and grow existing ones due to the lack of child care options. And residents say the signs of these economic costs are everywhere.
“I mean, you can talk to any business and they'll tell you, ‘Oh, yeah, so and so had to quit working to stay home with their kids,’” Jaden Blackburn said. “And a lot of the time, those problems don't go away, because you can't survive on one income in a lot of cases. So they just move to somewhere else, and it's a complete loss for the county.”
Morgan runs a gas station down the street from Blackburn Propane with her family and said it’s been difficult to staff at times due to the lack of child care. Once the new daycare opens, she said it will help local businesses like hers significantly.
“A lot of times we can get help when school is in,” she said. “But as soon as summer’s out, I mean, parents are like, ‘I can’t work anymore because I need to be home with my children.’”
Morgan plans to take her two youngest children to the Blackburns’ daycare, which she said will have a big impact on her own life.
“I'll definitely get more work done,” she said. “Have a little more sanity, maybe?”
For Barton, who quit her job as an advanced EMT in favor of her other, more consistent part-time position as a dental assistant earlier this year, she said the daycare may allow her to return to that “very needed” role in the county.
“I do miss being able to run on an ambulance,” she said. “And I think if I could do a shift of, yeah, I can be on call from eight to five, fantastic. I'll just send them to daycare and then just be able to be available.”
Whether a parent in Wayne County ultimately decides to work or stay home with their kids, she said the daycare will provide all families in the area with expanded options.
“If you want to stay home and be a stay home mom, fantastic,” she said. “But if you don't and you want to contribute to just the county economy or your individual economy, your family, you should be able to have that choice.”
The Wayne County Commission recently provided a $22,800 grant to the Blackburns to help them open the child care center. Jaden Blackburn said those funds will largely go toward furnishing the new daycare, which they hope to open toward the end of April.
How Wayne County residents say a state-licensed daycare could help parents with childcare costs: