A Grassroots Approach to Child Care
Susan Gray carried her passion for service from South Africa to Community Coordinated Child Care
For as long as she could remember, Susan Gray wanted to be a teacher. As a mother of two, she taught elementary school to segregated children in South Africa during the last several years of Apartheid. In an interview with ActWorthy, Susan described that call to serve:
I thought that education was a critical way of solving many of the problems that South Africa faced…I worked with some of the best teachers I could ever have encountered. We were doing really creative, innovative work. It was a very volatile time, and it was, at times, very scary…Some people serve their country in the army and I felt like [teaching] was serving our country’s needs in a peaceful, creative way.
Susan brought that passion for service to Iowa when she moved here with her family in 1993. When she arrived, Susan lacked employment authorization, so she devoted herself to her volunteer work, teaching English as a second language and eventually starting work at Home Ties Child Care Center. Home Ties provides three months of free, quality child care to families in need and discounted or full-priced care to other local families. Home Ties is one of several programs run by 4Cs. Through her work at Home Ties, Susan nurtured her passion for providing affordable, high quality child care to those who need it most.
Community Coordinated Child Care (4Cs) began in the 1970s in a local garage, compiling a list of home providers of child care for parents in need. Over time, the program became more formalized, expanding into education and training of child care providers in Johnson and Washington Counties, adding a toy library, and launching Home Ties Child Care Center in 1995. Susan’s relationship with 4Cs continued to deepen over the next two decades. Asked what made her passionate about 4Cs, Susan emphasized the importance of early childhood education to the birth-to-five age group:
We’ve learned over the last 20 years about the importance of these years…We used to think everything started in kindergarten, and now we know that 90% of brain development occurs before age five. It is a critical period in any person’s life…To me, a community is just stronger when our youngest and most vulnerable are well cared for.
Children represent the future of our community. Susan views 4Cs as building a better community through our children.
Through years in elementary education and decades deeply embedded in child care, Susan has seen the impact that a quality child care program can have on the educational future of children in need. She adds:
We have to make sure that when children move into school, they are ready to learn. And a lot of this work falls on child care programs.
Focused on Results, Not on Publicity
Like many local nonprofits doing outstanding work, 4Cs has managed to create high quality programs with relatively few resources. To accomplish this, 4Cs has focused its efforts and resources on its programs rather than spreading the word about those programs to the broader public. As a result, some people in need might not even know about the valuable services that 4Cs provides. In particular, for Johnson County residents, Susan pointed out:
I don’t think many people know about our crisis childcare program which offers 24 hours-per-day, 7-days a week free care to a family in crisis.
Imagine you were a pregnant family in Johnson County who already had children, going into labor without a support system to provide child care. In a community without 4Cs, children could be left unattended or worse.
In a recent case, a pregnant mother with three children went into labor, and the hospital contacted Susan’s office. 4Cs coordinated and dispatched a child care provider to the hospital to pick up and take care of the children that night. The mom signed their release forms, and the children were cared for until she came out of the hospital. That is what it means for a community to coordinate child care. 4Cs’ Crisis Child Care Program is to child care as Triple-A is to roadside assistance: always available when you need them most, but with no membership required.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”
— Benjamin Franklin
For parents, 4Cs often plays the role of emergency support. For children, 4Cs is all about prevention. Child care is very sensitive for parents, who want to make sure that children with behavioral issues are disciplined or removed. But it is also critical for children to receive the support they need. 4Cs wants to intervene with children before behavioral issues start to arise.
For a child, behavioral issues like biting may actually be the result of a challenge with communication. That’s why 4Cs sends expert child care consultants to observe and support child care centers in Johnson and Washington Counties as well as offering training workshops and community resources to child care centers. These experts can help providers identify a budding behavioral issue before it occurs and select the right methods of preventative care. 4Cs’ preventative interventions allow child care centers to minimize the risk to all children while maximizing the potential of each child.
A nonprofit can’t do it alone; that’s where ActWorthy comes in
Susan wants to expand 4Cs’ work to support more parents, children, and child care providers. To do that, she needs to build awareness, expand their volunteer program, and increase the resources they can deploy to families in need. That’s where ActWorthy comes in.
ActWorthy is building the social media platform for social change. We are connecting more people to quietly world-altering organizations like 4Cs. In the coming weeks, ActWorthy will deploy cause-driven marketing campaigns to raise awareness of the ways you can make a difference with 4Cs and other local nonprofits. For nonprofits like 4Cs, we are building tools to attract people to their worthy cause without increasing the administrative burden on Susan and her team.
Whether you are passionate about child care, education, health care, or poverty, there are actionable ways anyone can make an impact with the time and resources you have. 4Cs is one of the amazing organizations doing transformational work in our community.
Join the Movement
We have tons of ideas about how to make ActWorthy work for our community, but it all starts with your support. If you live near Cedar Rapids or Iowa City, join our community today! To start, we’ll email you a digest of actions you can take to make a difference locally.
Are you an organization or activist doing amazing work in Iowa? We want to show it off! Email us at ross@actworthy.org if you’d like to be profiled on ActWorthy’s social media. #WorthyWednesday
