"Wisconsin Today" spoke with the directors of two higher education child care centers about the needs of student-parents and the challenges they face when it comes to seeking child care and education.
The post Wisconsin’s campus child care facilities offer parents foothold in higher education appeared first on WPR.
Research shows that children benefit from after-school programs, but four in five Wisconsin children are missing out. | Photo of girl on playground by Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images
I have visited many after-school and summer programs across Wisconsin, from large urban sites to small rural schools, and what I’ve seen has stayed with me. I’ve watched students immersed in creative writing, acting and robotics. I’ve observed staff working one-on-one with kids navigating intense emotional challenges. And I’ve seen the smiles on middle schoolers’ faces as they reconnect with trusted mentors at the end of the school day. These programs are not “extras”; they provide crucial support to kids, families, and entire communities.
And yet, for far too many Wisconsin families, these opportunities remain out of reach. According to the latest America After 3PM report, nearly 275,000 Wisconsin children who would participate in after-school programs are not enrolled because none are available. Four in five children who could benefit from these supports are missing out. Parents cite cost, lack of transportation, and a simple lack of local programming as the biggest barriers.
The impact of these programs is undeniable. Parents overwhelmingly rate their children’s after-school programs as excellent or very good, reporting that they keep kids safe, build social skills, and support mental wellness. Research in Wisconsin shows that students who participate in extracurricular activities are less likely to report anxiety or depression and more likely to feel a sense of belonging.
Out-of-school time programs often provide the space for deep, long-term mentoring, a powerful protective factor in a young person’s life. While teachers are often stretched thin during the academic day, out-of-school time staff can focus on the relational side of development.
When funding is unstable, it undermines the very connections that make these programs transformative. Recently, a Boys & Girls Club director shared the human cost of budget constraints: they were forced to reduce a veteran staff member to part-time. This didn’t just trim a budget; it severed a multi-year mentorship. When that bond was broken, several youths stopped attending entirely.
Across the country, after-school and summer programs are increasingly viewed as essential to youth development. Twenty-seven states provide dedicated state funding for these programs; Wisconsin provides none. States as different as Alabama and Texas recognize that federal funding alone is not enough. So do our Midwestern neighbors.
Public support for these programs is strong and bipartisan. Families across Wisconsin want safe, enriching opportunities for their children. With a significant budget surplus, Wisconsin is uniquely positioned to invest in its future.
State leaders should view out-of-school programming as a foundation for safety, mental health, and long-term economic opportunity. We have the resources; now we need the will. By committing to consistent state funding, we can ensure that every young person in Wisconsin has a place to belong when the school bell rings.
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In Walworth County, Wisconsin, a grassroots effort is reimagining what care can look like across generations. A local community group has launched the “Nursery to Nursing Home” campaign, a proposal to transform a vacant wing of the county’s nursing home into a combined child care center and living space for older adults, addressing caregiving shortages.
“Some of the issues we’ve seen as top concerns in Walworth County include a lack of child care, a lack of senior care and the loneliness that comes with living in a rural community with an aging population and harsh winters. Together, it all creates a perfect storm for feeling isolated,” said Maddie Sweetman, who lives in Walworth County. “(The intergenerational care center) would be a beautiful way to not only address the need for seats and beds, but also to bring these two vulnerable communities together.”
The Lakeland Health Care Center, a county-owned skilled nursing facility in Elkhorn, has had a vacant wing since 2019 when staff shortages forced the facility to downsize. Now, Groundswell Collective, a local community group with a track record of advocating for older residents, is leading an effort to turn that space into 12 apartments for older people and a child care center that serves 60 to 70 children. After nearly a year of community organizing around the proposal, the Walworth County Board approved funding for a feasibility study in November for the intergenerational care center, a major step in advancing the project.
“In Walworth County, all 2,240 licensed child care slots, spread across the 35 active centers listed on the DCF (Department of Children and Families) website, are already full. That leaves nearly 2,680 children without stable care,” said Abriana Krause, who lives and works in East Troy as a child care provider, at a board committee meeting. “At the same time, Wisconsin is projected to need 30,000 additional senior beds by 2030 .… We are facing two parallel crises, child care and senior care, and the vacant wing at Lakeland Health Care Center offers us a rare opportunity to address both at once.”
As part of the proposal, county employees would get priority for child care slots.
Sweetman, a mother of two who is a full-time student and employee at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, knows firsthand how valuable this benefit could be for parents. When Sweetman’s children were younger, her husband worked at Lakeland Health Care Center as a certified nursing assistant while he completed nursing school. Unable to afford child care, Sweetman stayed home with her young children.
“I wonder whether having a child care facility under the same roof would have given me more access to child care, allowing me to return to school work sooner, graduate sooner, and be working full time now,” Sweetman said. “I also think about how that might have changed our overall trajectory, and what it would have meant for me personally as I managed two kids under two on my own and all the mental health challenges that came with that.”
Now, Sweetman is part of Groundswell Collective and advocating for other families to have the opportunity she did not.
“That (child care opportunity) didn’t happen for us, but I think about how it could happen for people going forward and for our community, not just for those who have children but also for seniors and for people who may soon need assisted living,” Sweetman said.
Groundswell Collective has leaned heavily on research to make its case.
“We have looked into the evidence-based benefits of intergenerational care,” said Deb Gill-Dorgan, a retired speech language pathologist and member of Groundswell Collective. “We know that adults report less loneliness, better health, a renewed sense of purpose in life, and it improves children’s social skills and educational outcomes.”
Research shows that intergenerational care sites boost well-being for both children and older people, reducing isolation, improving cognitive and physical health for older people, and cultivating empathy and connection in young children. Studies also find that these programs create cost efficiencies, especially when facility expenses and other operational costs can be shared.
Jill Juris, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Recreation Management and Physical Education at Appalachian State University, is seeing these benefits through her research with BRIDGE2Health, an intergenerational mentoring program. The program is a collaboration between the Cooperative Extensions in Ohio and Virginia that connects high school students with older adults and is generating qualitative and quantitative data demonstrating increases in social connections and life skills.
“These findings align with other research indicating intergenerational interaction improves empathy, peer relationships and academic performance in younger populations, while increasing the quality of life and sense of purpose for older adults,” Juris said. “By bridging the gap between ages, these programs truly make a difference, improving the all-around well-being of everyone involved.”
Sheri Steinig, director of strategic initiatives and communications at Generations United, said that intergenerational care fosters relationships that transcend age that can serve the community as a whole.
“There’s a breakdown of age stereotypes that we see at a very young age when babies and toddlers are around older people,” Steinig said. “There are these characteristics of care, compassion and empathy that ripple out into both the families and the communities.”
In intentionally creating spaces that bring older and younger people together, these benefits organically emerge in daily interactions.
“By eliminating or reducing barriers that we’ve unintentionally put up between connecting younger and older people, there’s just a wealth of benefits that we can see in terms of educational outcomes, well-being, physical and mental health,” Steinig said.
“Intergenerational spaces offer opportunities for meaningful interactions through repeated connections that foster lasting relationships,” Juris said. “Children and older adults seeing each other within a daily routine allows for magical moments of interaction to occur.”
Those benefits extend to the caregiving staff. Steinig said that daily interaction with both children and older adults can enhance the work environment and make intergenerational centers more rewarding for staff.
Gill-Dorgan said she hopes that prioritizing county employees for child care placements at the proposed intergenerational center will help retain nursing staff, who can experience high turnover while managing their own family caregiving responsibilities.
For many involved in Groundswell Collective, the intergenerational center proposal offers a path forward on common ground at a time of uncertainty.
“As gaps widen at the federal level, I feel like there’s this turn to local solutions and our local government, and how can we fill the gaps? I see this intergenerational facility as part of that effort,” Sweetman said.
Pastor Lily Brellenthin, a mother of three who leads a Lutheran church in Walworth that serves an older congregation, has found hope through her community work with Groundswell Collective.
“In a world that’s so divided, to have some people now linking arm and arm to come together in our little place of the world is so uplifting,” said Brellenthin. “I feel like it’s proving that we are stronger in community.”
“We hope this is just the beginning,” Gill-Dorgan said. “We hope something like this will be seen as being beneficial and a wonderful idea, and hopefully other people will get involved and build more such centers.”
This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations, and The Commonwealth Fund.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
‘Nursery to nursing home’: Walworth County group envisions shared care across generations is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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