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Description

Gloria calls up Camille Bennett, an activist, child care center owner, minister, and the founder of Project Say Something, an organization confronting anti-Black racism in her home state of Alabama. Camille paints a picture of child care in the Deep South – one that includes staffing shortages, a broken subsidy system, structural racism, child care deserts, tears, stress, and teachers and parents at their wits’ end. But Camille tells Gloria what’s giving her hope in spite of these challenges, and how she is fighting for change alongside her fellow child care workers.

Learn more about Project Say Something at their website: https://projectsaysomething.org/. And follow them on social media @projectsaysomethingal.

This podcast is presented by Neighborhood Villages, and is brought to you with generous support from Imaginable Futures, Care For All Children by the David and Laura Merage Foundation, and Spring Point Partners.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gloria Riviera, Camille Bennett.

Gloria Riviera  01:26

Good morning. I am driving home from the grocery store. Does anyone else feel like they are always at the grocery store? I’m always at the grocery store. If there is ever like God forbid a missing persons out for me, I mean head straight to the Safeway. You will probably find me there

Gloria Riviera

It is true that I feel like I am often if not always at Safeway. Right now I am not. I’m at home at my desk. And I want to say hi and welcome. This is No One is Coming To Save us From Lemonada Media and I’m your host Gloria Riviera. Our guest today is a woman who again amazes me that seems to be the running theme. We talked to all of these people who are so amazing. Today we speak with Camille Bennett. She owns and operates three childcare centers in Florence, Alabama. She is also the founder of Project Say Something, it’s an organization confronting anti-Black racism in her home state. She is also a minister with the living spirit church. It was founded by her parents, actually her LinkedIn profile says she is a non-traditional Minister of truth. And when I read both non-traditional and truth, I thought, yeah, I can speak to this person we can talk. That ministry was founded by her father and her mother Bob and Vicki Goldston, who and I’m going to quote from the website here wanted a spiritual center of inclusion that embodied the principles of acceptance and love. And that is not entirely unlike what I, what we, want for childcare and early education in this country. You are going to hear Camille educate me on what it looks like, what it feels like, from her perspective, to be a Black woman trying to keep her child care center open during and now quote unquote, after or is it really after the pandemic. You are going to hear Camille educate me on the divide between what early educators mainly women of color and immigrant women know they need, what they actually need to improve a very complicated system of subsidies in Alabama. And the kind of sort of crazy ideas that Alabama’s mostly White lawmakers who don’t really get it come up with and you’ll hear about some small wins. That they are wins. Camille has managed to secure by crossing that divide herself. You’re also going to hear her hit the table a few times. Because she does that when she makes a good point. And she makes a lot of good points. But before we dive into this interview, I do want to tell you about a very exciting new podcast from Lemonada media. The network behind no one is coming to save us. BEING is reality TV for your ears. It is an innovative audio format like no other podcast you have ever heard. This season. It’s being trans. Meet Chloe, Jeffrey, Mariana, and Psy. Over the course of six episodes, you will get to be a fly on the wall for their most intimate conversations and unscripted, very raw moments, you will ride alongside them as they navigate family relationships, love lives, friendships, healthcare, professional careers, and everything else that comes with living life as a transgender person in Los Angeles. With this podcast, you’re going to gain unique insights. And you will also have an empathetic understanding of their personal experiences. Being trans is out now. Wherever you get your podcasts. All right, here we go. This is my conversation with Camille Bennett. Hi, Camille. It’s so good to see you.

Camille Bennett  05:57

It’s good to see you too.

Gloria Riviera

Let me start with one of my favorite questions which you are a mother, correct?

Camille Bennett  06:03

I am a mother of two boys.

Gloria Riviera 

How old are your boys?

Camille Bennett

They are 20 and 16.

Gloria Riviera

I mean, as you said that the first word in my head was babies. When you woke up, did you have a moment where you triaged anything related to the running of your life? The house, the kids? I always feel like I can’t help but my mind starts racing and I’m trying to figure something out. Do you remember what it was for you this morning?

Camille Bennett

Oh, oh dear. Yes. I mean, I went to bed triaging, I woke up triaging, right. So my 20-year-old son is in transition. He was one of the children that got displaced or an Omicron. Got sick. It was a mess, had to come home. And he’s a very structured kid. So it’s been hard, but he’s going back in the fall. So that’s been a constant. And then I have a 16-year-old who’s very hormonal, dealing with them. And then I also had a staff have a pretty difficult staffing issue at one of the senators that I’ve got to deal with this morning. So that all three of those things were kind of playing out in my head this morning,

Gloria Riviera

Emergency whack a mole, right

Camille Bennett 

I mean, my kids are not necessarily emergency, but they’re just ornery. It’s like, I’m always trying to brainstorm how I can shift that.

Gloria Riviera 

Yeah. So now you are the owner and director of two, right, two childcare centers, three, you’re putting up three fingers. And so talk me through what it looks when you look at your bottom line. I know that Alabama suffers from what childcare programs across the country suffer from, right? There staffing shortages, the workers aren’t paid as much as they should be. But what does it look like in terms of federal funding for you, and I want you to tell us about subsidies and swipe cards, because that was news to me.

Camille Bennett  08:21

I can start with federal funding and what that means to our centers, so a lot of my advocacy work is not because we’re living hand to mouth and it’s a financial burden. There’s privilege, right? My husband has a master’s degree in grant writing, he writes federal grants to really make sure we’re financially solvent at all times. That’s privilege. And I have a husband working with me. That’s privilege. But when you think about the whole of childcare, or the childcare industry in Alabama, that’s not the case. You have a lot of single women, you know, relying on the week to week pay to cover their centers, many of the and we can’t get to statistics that we need, probably on purpose, but we know enough to know is a predominantly Black industry, right? Black women. And we also know for sure, we did get this statistic that 80% of the children on child care subsidy are Black, which is 40% higher than the national average. So you’ve got Black women with centers and another thing race does play into this because a lot of the White centers, I won’t say all but there are some purposely don’t take childcare subsidy or selectively take childcare subsidy because they know what’s on the other end of it.

Gloria Riviera  10:01

What do you mean by that?

Camille Bennett

Well, 80% of the children are Black. You have children that come from safety plans or foster care, that’s an automatic you get childcare subsidy. Some children are getting it because they’re at risk. Some children are getting it because their mother is in the jobs program. That means moms struggle to even find transportation to get to work, and had to work with the state to find work. And the state provides a taxi. And so the clientele they may feel is a challenge.

Gloria Riviera 

So they say we don’t want to take subsidies. So you’re saying the White run centers make a decision, some of them. Some of them, you know, I want to make that clear, saying some do not choose to take children who are on subsidies because they know that will change the people, the children that they get?

Camille Bennett

The culture, the culture of the center. Our programs are like 96%, childcare subsidy and many other Black led programs are you’re going to get a lot of subsidy children. When it comes to subsidy, if you have 90% of your children on childcare subsidy, that means every dollar you get comes from that program. The way they have it set up now is they have a machine. The parents have to swipe in and swipe out every single day. So say mom will call her Miss Molly, Miss Molly comes in, she swipes in, but she forgets to swipe out. The next day she comes in and keep swiping, guess what? The machine will not register the rest of the swipes as if she didn’t even attend for a week.

Gloria Riviera  12:07

And you only get paid if the child is in attendance.

Camille Bennett

That’s what that swiping machine is doing is trying to monitor, not enrollment. They think is getting the money for enrollment. They don’t want us to have it. They want to monitor us with this swiping. Now here’s where it gets complicated with COVID. In the past, most centers, you know, figured it out. We had you know, you had your staff that was watching every day, what we did is I would go into the system and take a look and textile appearance and all this. But when COVID hit your IT YOU HAVEN’T you’re in a staffing crisis, you don’t have time to do what you used to do. You literally don’t. And the state changed the policy before COVID Say apparent forgets to swipe for a week. You can send in paperwork. And in eight weeks, you get your money back. That’s still a long time. But eight weeks COVID hits, the state says no more. They forget to swipe; you chase the money.

Gloria Riviera 

What does that mean? You chase the money?

Camille Bennett

You go to the parent and say you forgot to swipe this week. You owe me $141.

Sara Gilbert

And where’s the money coming from out of the parents pocket out? So they receive the money, and it is their responsibility to get it to you or when they swipe? It’s automatic.

Camille Bennett

When they swipe is automatic. Okay, so what you’re essentially asking this parent who to get childcare subsidy, you know, money’s tied to be a part of the program, you’re essentially asking them to go into their pockets and pay you $141 is a forgot for two weeks. They have to pay for two weeks. So that’s 200 and something dollars.

Gloria Riviera  14:05

There as a business owner providing a service you believe in? And what does that do to your bottom line? Are you running around? Crazy trying to get this money from the parents? Yeah, you’re shaking your head.

Camille Bennett

You have to just to stay. I mean, I think resources are important in this business. You want to try to pay your teachers Well, there’s always something that needs to be done. Building Maintenance, you have to so you can’t afford to have weekly $1,000 A week missing. What I do is I do it in the kindest way possible. So say a parent owes. I don’t know $300 They have forever and two years to pay it back. If you can pay $10 a week, pay $10 A week as long as we have a way of recovering it. And that’s worked well.

Sara Gilbert

Does it feel like you’re always behind? You’re always like, how much does the financial burden of running your center weigh on you? Because what you’re explaining to me feels you’re shaking your head like, I just, is that part of what you’re triaging or you’ve dealt with it, you know it, they’ve said they’ll pay.

Camille Bennett

I know it. They said that they’ll pay but because we have other federal programming, we partner with Head start, we get rent, we have the OSR program, we have the freedom school, we have other grants supporting us. That’s why we’re financially solvent. If we didn’t have those things, we would be in a world of hurt.

Gloria Riviera

When we come back, Camille tells me how her work with projects say something is very much intertwined with her work running three childcare centers.

Gloria Riviera

Talk to me because you wear a lot of hats and one of the other hats you wear is as the founder and executive director of Project Say something. So where do those two worlds collide for you? What do you see? When you are in your center, when you’re with the kids that resonates with the work you do at Project Say something?

Camille Bennett 

They collide in the most beautiful ways and some of it is painful. Well, when you look at child, the history of child care, especially in like the Deep South. And the reasons why we’re treated the way we’re treated. Not don’t get me wrong is wrong across the country. But in the deep, deep South, I think it’s always exaggerated, right? Racism is exaggerated. A lot of this treatment comes from the mammy trope. Black women took care of children. That’s what we did for little and nothing. And so now you see childcare centers. You don’t have to have very much education to open a childcare center and you’re treated. You’re treated in a certain way based on history; I believe. So that desire to control our money to control how prosperous we become from this business, to me, is, is a symptom of systemic racism. So that’s one thing. So as I advocate for childcare policy, I’m, I’m really meeting some of the projects, say something mission, which is to end patriarchal violence. And so this is a system where white women and men, but men are controlling the way we care for our children. We also do work around children on safety plans, not foster care, but safety plans. So in the Black community, a lot of times when, you know, we’re overly monitored, so DHR is in the predominantly low-income area. Way too much.

Gloria Riviera  20:57

DHR is the Department of Human Resources. They’re in your community too much. You think?

Camille Bennett

Yes, yes. Because there are, you know, we’re constantly being the children are constantly being monitored for, are they eating enough? Or is this happening? Is that happening? That kind of thing? So if there is an allegation, and the child, there’s a finding, maybe they find that mom smoked marijuana, and pick child up from school, they did a test is positive. Now, there’s only one option, and they’ve got 30 minutes to make it, child is either going to foster care, or you can call a relative or a friend and come get the baby. So a lot of times, just out of community you see next door neighbors like yeah, you know, I’ve got 30 seconds, yes, I’m going to do it. I’m scared this child is gonna go into foster care. But you don’t with a safety plan. You don’t have the same resources as foster care, foster care, you have to go through like six weeks of training, it’s a lot of work, a lot of lower income. Women don’t have time for that they gotta work themselves. So they take in a child, they don’t have money for food, they don’t have money. They may get some food stamps, possibly. They don’t have money for clothing. They do not have money to take care of this child. I’ve seen women taken three and four children at a time. What we do is come in, if we find out about it, we supplement. So we’ll pay for the for extra food, we’ll pay for that Project Say Something, we’ll pay for a bed, we’ll pay for clothing, things like that. And then the work intersects also, you know, the maternal death rate in Alabama is horrible. So we have an on-site doula. The first Black doula in our area, on our onsite doula and we will pay for the services, doula care for our pregnant moms.

Gloria Riviera

I mean, what you’re explaining to me is that yes, you run these child care centers. But your other hat brings you into the family much earlier, right before the child’s even born. So how did those two things come to be? I mean, I don’t know. I guess you just don’t sleep.

Camille Bennett

When you start doing the work of what I call movement work, racial justice work. Especially if you’re coming from a, a fan lens, you’re exposed to the maternal death. You understand that Black women need doulas and that we need to bridge that gap. We need to make sure that our babies are healthy at birth, and so I knew about doulas, and I’ve been approached many times from women who were either trying to fight for midwifery to be in law or doula care. And what I did realize immediately was many Black women cannot afford these services, and insurance doesn’t pay. So what can we do to help a little bit? We’re not doing that much, but we’re having a little bit.

Gloria Riviera  24:14

I want to go back to what you said, because it made me perk up about the racial injustice that is baked into child care, particularly in the Deep South. And we touched on it in season one of our show, and we spoke to a historian about slavery and about Black women taking care of white babies. But what made me perk up is when you said that there’s still this monitoring, there’s still this control issue, and it’s part of what’s contributing to the ongoing racial injustice. That’s where child care comes into it.

Camille Bennett 

That’s correct.

Sara Gilbert

Just talk about that a little bit to me. Do you In that the decisions being made at the state government level, at the federal level about funding, that they’re being made by White politicians who cannot have the necessary understanding of what’s needed in centers like yours, is that too simplistic? Or am I on the right track?

Camille Bennett

You’re on the right track, the decisions are actually being made by folks. So you have lobbyists, you have childcare advocacy is a business within itself, in the nonprofit industrial complex, right? So and I learned about this when I was asked to be a part of a coalition. So now I get to see on the inside who’s helping make these decisions. And it is, it is white women that have no experience, like actually working. Or they may have dealt with childcare briefly. But they don’t know the business, they don’t understand how policy actually impacts us on the ground. But they come together, and they create programming that they think will be helpful. And then they go and speak with politicians and speak with the Department of Human Resources, and really advocate for what they think we need. That itself is racial injustice, in my opinion. So as soon as I got into the room, you know, I started to bring in other childcare providers that look like me. And we were like, we don’t need that. They create it, for example, they put millions of dollars into a program called quality stars. And white lobbyists supported and advocated for it, only, even though they were hearing from black providers that are saying, we really need is gotta fix childcare subsidy. So once I was able to actually see that, and experienced that and be on the steering committee for these coalition’s, I understood, oh, this is how it’s happening. We’re not even allowed in the room.

Gloria Riviera 

So if we’re going to try to fix this, it sounds like what you’re saying is, it has to be more from the inside out. I mean, I have heard over and over, the people who are working in childcare are the people who know what it really needs. And yet the people making the decisions about how to help, how to allocate funds to support childcare, there’s a disconnect there.

Camille Bennett

A huge disconnect. So many of these women who are tasked with speaking with DHR and making recommendations, they didn’t understand the childcare subsidy model. We had to explain everything. How are you doing this job? Well, if you don’t understand the inner workings of it, and I also dare to say that many of us childcare owners are policy experts, you can show us a policy, we’ll tell you how it’s gonna play out on the ground, and if it will work, or if it won’t.

Gloria Riviera  28:20

So now, does this make you want to expand your, the to do list that you have the triage list that you have, and work for effective policy change? I mean, that’s what I think is so like, is that the answer that I don’t know how, it is to you?

Camille Bennett

We’ve already changed a policy.

Gloria Riviera 

Which policy? Tell me about it.

Camille Bennett

We can close for COVID.

Gloria Riviera

Tell us all about this.

Camille Bennett 

They were telling us either use, you get like 14 days’ vacation time or something like that, or the child is allowed five absences a month on childcare subsidy. But there was literally nothing to cover when we’re closing every other day for Omicron, the Omicron variant. So we got in there, myself and another team member, got in there and spoke with the Department of Human Resources. And we were just vulnerable and honest. And we were like, we deserve to be able to close to keep our and still have the money to do it. And the Department of Human Resources wasn’t necessarily happy to have conversation with us. But then we looked up and like the next week, there was a letter that said, you can close your centers. If it’s a COVID related issue, you don’t have to provide documentation. All you have to do is say for the child. They were out due to COVID.

Gloria Riviera

Right. And so how does that help your bottom line? How does that help you, your financial health?

Camille Bennett 

It helps tremendously because now centers when they have a child that’s out for a month and a half, all they have to do is fill out paperwork and say this child was out due to COVID. And they are able to recover that money. The subsidy money, this is strictly for subsidy children. So it was a huge win, especially because Omicron was hitting us so hard. And my only concern is doing the senators have the time to do the paperwork? But just to know that, that option was there, that it wasn’t there before shows that doing work on advocacy on a policy level is the way to go. If you want to make effective change in childcare, so I lobbied every week of session and traveled you know traveled to Montgomery, that’s three hours away, every single week, stay for two days.

Gloria Riviera  30:55

Oh my gosh.

Camille Bennett 

That’s what it takes, if you want your voice to be heard, but again, you know, our next step is to work on finding funding so that I can build something more robust. So next year, we can do it better. I need to be able to reach out to centers across the state which requires travel and funding. I would prefer it not to come from our own. And you know, and to be able to do this work in a more effective way.

Gloria Riviera

You’ve heard of food deserts, right? Well, after this break, Camille tells me there are childcare deserts too, plus, your real childcare moments from the No One is Coming To Save Us community. So what does it look like at your center every day? Like what time do you open? What time do you close? You opened a third center you don’t stop, it’s kind of amazing.

Camille Bennett  34:34

We open at 6:30 we close at 5:30, now I’m not the one honestly I’m not there all the time. Taris, my husband you know he camps out at this at the center, he buzzes in and out. A lot of days I work from home because I still have to do project say something work. We have a manager we have a compliance director to help with the paperwork. So it things have gotten a lot nicer used to be at all the resort, but as you grow as a center, you’re able to kind of offload some tasks. Each center is like an age group. So we have one center specifically for infants. Up until 18 months, we have another center from 18 months to three to four. When they turn four, they go to the other center, and that is the pre-K program. And also it’s a before and after school for ages four through 12.

Gloria Riviera 

Now when you go into the community to look for staffing, that’s another question. Because I know that so many people, you just put your head in your hands.

Camille Bennett

It is trial and error. A lot of trial and error. A lot of hypervigilance.

Gloria Riviera

Is it you saying like this is working, this is not working?

Camille Bennett  36:00

It makes me feel sterile. But we have cameras, we have to watch for the main thing is a treatment of the children, working with children, toddlers, especially post-pandemic. I mean, we’re seeing behavioral issues, like we have never seen before, ever.

Gloria Riviera 

What kind of behavioral issues like separation anxiety?

Camille Bennett 

Acting out, tantrums. Children that are anxious, they don’t want to sleep. Some children don’t want to eat, these children are stressed, you know, from parents being displaced from work and all of the other drama, and the dads.

Gloria Riviera 

Right. I mean, so all of a sudden these people who I mean predominantly women and women of color in your centers, they have to be I mean, therapist, teacher, caregiver, we it’s a long list of things that are being asked of them.

Camille Bennett

This year, is the first year I’ve ever experienced teachers just breaking down crying.

Gloria Riviera 

God, what it does look like? I mean, can you think of one experience?

Camille Bennett 

One experience was in the course of a week, two of my teachers baby’s father’s dropped dead. While they were on the clock. And when I personally got sick with COVID and the flu, and had to be hospitalized, when that happened, a lot of the parents because I’m strict, somebody’s parents are resentful. They’re like she’s gone. I’m gonna get you. […] mistreating the teachers, you know, not all parents. But it only takes a few to make you break down. You know, it may have been three or four families, but they weren’t, you know, the teachers were crying because they were being mistreated, talking to them in inappropriate ways we had to put signs up, do not abuse us. Things like that. Oh my God, because they were you have to understand the parents are frustrated. I know closing, they can’t get a break. One week is okay. In every time, there was COVID We hit the building, I will close a lot of senators, you know, childcare, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to close, you don’t have to wear a mask, there are no regulations. You can do what you want. But for us, I just didn’t want any blood on my hands, anybody to die. And you know, we have teachers that are elders, you cannot do that to them. So and they still got paid for all closures, all of that. But that that accumulation of that stress plus the deaths. This all happened and you know, they were crying a lot. And so to make that better, I mean, we do have bonuses as the State offers, but the money they don’t even seem motivated by money anymore.

Sara Gilbert 

Well, now you’re dealing with the repercussions of all of that, like that was one chapter but now you’re dealing with the repercussions of everything that folks went through.

Camille Bennett 

I think so. I think so.

Sara Gilbert 

Can I ask you when you look at the landscape in Alabama and these kids get to public school age, how many more centers are needed do you think? Just in Florence. What is you’re looking like, too many to count are needed.

Camille Bennett

We’re in a childcare desert, so I’ll give you an example. We had six or seven children to drop. And when I say drop, that means, you know, mom got a job working from home, or they moved, sometimes it just happens all at once. But it was nothing really negative. The next day, all those spots were filled the next day, all those spots were filled. So that means we are in a childcare desert, especially in Florence, because the CMA, childcare subsidy, you got to be licensed. And we don’t have enough licensed centers.

Gloria Riviera  40:44

And is that because people are just not going into the business because they think it’s not going to be, they’re not up to it. It’s too much?

Camille Bennett 

I think it’s because, again, Florence is the city of Florence is 20% to 25% Black. I think, to get the kind of child centered care centers we need, you got to be taken subsidy. Yeah. And there are there are not enough people that want to do the business. I mean, it’s childcare during the pandemic. Do people really want to go there right now?

Camille Bennett 

But I hear you it’s not it’s not an attractive business to get into right now.

Camille Bennett

Right now, it’s not cute. And so you’ve got that. And then also for White people to open up a center, and do and take the subsidy, they’re going to have to experience a culture change, a huge win, and that may be intimidating.

Gloria Riviera 

Which you think is good for them? Like that has to happen?

Camille Bennett 

I think they would need education. And it could be very good. If you have education around cultural competency. So if you’re reading like the State book, and it says, You’re never supposed to tell a child no. And you have to keep her voice and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you get to a completely different culture, or a group of people that are socio economically different from you. And if you call to a child and say, oh, sweetie, you’re having a tantrum right now. Don’t, you know, just get up, baby. That child will look at you like you’re crazy. Absolutely crazy. What necessary is excuse me, sir. We’re not tantruming today. Let’s go. You know that. And that’s seen as love, that’s not seen as harshness.

Sara Gilbert  42:50

I have this right. Like, initially, when we started this conversation, you said that these childcare centers are making a decision not to take kids who use subsidies because they don’t want that culture change within their own center. So that creates a divide. And you’re in a childcare desert, right? So you need more centers. So you need more people to take the kids with subsidies, which will then force a cultural change at that center. And that’s not happening. And it wouldn’t be beneficial. If it did. It would be hard. It wouldn’t be pretty; it would be challenging. But you’re talking about a culture change that has to happen due to racial divide in Alabama?

Camille Bennett

In the public-school systems. It’s like 50/50 for some now we have because of private schools, a lot of White families do, you know, have private school, they’d send them to a private school. So you’re a public schools, elementary schools, one is predominantly black. One is predominantly Latinx. And the other is straight down the middle 50/50. So the truth is, it is being done on the elementary and high school and junior high school level, right? But for some reason, when children are smaller, there’s like more of an incubation. I think that they feel that that, you know, they don’t want to expose them to I don’t know anything that’s harmful, or I don’t know what the idea is, but it could work with education.

Gloria Riviera  44:31

Yeah, yeah. Well, I am a big believer in that. I think it all starts with education. And now I think it all starts it, you know, zero to five.

Camille Bennett 

Yes, it really does.

Sara Gilbert

It does. It does. We know that. We have to wrap up and before we leave, I want to ask you, I think I know I was going to ask you what is weighing on yourself on you right now. And you said before, it’s the subsidies and that issue, is there anything else that’s weighing on you right now with childcare?

Camille Bennett 

The mental health of our teachers and owners, but mostly the teachers, because we’re not with the children all day every day, they are. And so that’s something that I’m really sensitive to, and make accommodations all the time for our teachers, but I feel like it’s never enough because it’s hard on them.

Gloria Riviera 

Yeah. And what’s giving you hope right now? I mean, I feel like you have a lot of it, in reserve, or else you wouldn’t be in this, in the work that you do. What gives you hope?

Camille Bennett 

The kids, the babies, their babies, their ages. They’re just perfect and hilarious. And if you can’t hang out with them for a day and not feel hopeful, you need to get out the business, because that’s gonna keep you hopeful every time it’s just them. And their parents.

Sara Gilbert  46:01

Yeah, yeah. Well, good. Okay, go hang out with the kids. That’s my direction for you. If you’re looking for some, Camille Bennett, thank you so much for speaking to us. Thank you for the work that you do with Project Say Something, we didn’t even get a chance to really go into it. But there’ll be a lot of information about everything that you do in our show notes. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot in this last hour. And I would be guessing that we’ll be back to speak to you again soon.

Camille Bennett

I hope so. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you.

Gloria Riviera

We need more people like Camille in this fight? Don’t you guys think so? I do. I think her superpower is communicating effectively and exacting change. And she’s already doing it. I appreciate how she walked me through understanding how subsidies work in Alabama, that happens all over the country, and how she has that pluck and confidence to say, Yeah, you’re right. We are having this difficult conversation now as of right now. So I can help you, legislator, understand, WTF is really going on. And how childcare and early education providers will elect not to take kids on subsidies because it will negatively impact their bottom line as a business and just as important, change the culture of their classrooms. I now understand why that is happening. But it’s not right. And how Camille manage that win that centers could close due to COVID. And they would not lose out on the subsidy income that would have been coming in. If not for COVID. Okay, that that makes sense. Camille gives me hope. And don’t you just love how she lights up when she talks about the kids. I mean, she just lights up. I want to say thank you again to Camille. I have a feeling we will be checking back in with her soon. Okay, we have come to one of my very favorite parts of the show. I just love this. It gets better and better every week. We get to hear from you, our No One is Coming To Save Us community. Your moments big and small. Tidy? Well, we haven’t heard so many tidy ones yet. But super messy for sure. teary, but also tinged with a little bit of joy.

Speaker 3  48:34

Hey, Gloria, it’s Carol […] I’m in Poughkeepsie, New York, and I am a childcare director, early childhood educator parent. So I want to share with you some of the phrases I’ve heard that drive me crazy, things like, I’m not going to let someone else raise my kids and put them in daycare all day, or I don’t think you should have kids if you can’t afford them. So this whole idea that like child care, teachers are Surrogate Parenting is a misnomer. It’s a misunderstanding. We don’t want to be parents were educators. And part of educating is caring. It is changing diaper, it is holding children, it is wiping noses. But there’s this because of the intimate nature of our work. There’s this confusion and there’s this guilt and there’s this shame that parents have leaving their kids with us or that educators have about the work they do. Because they’re confused about their role because society has not given us any clout. So I just think it’s so important to think about early childhood educators as partners, as mentors as collaborators with parents, not trying to be parents and your work is helping people understand that better. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4

My name is Laura and I live in Iowa City, Iowa. Sitting in my backyard right now, with my dog. It’s kind of one really peaceful moments in the day. I just wanted to say when I heard it helps, I’ll say in the last episode that, you know, lets you get into the grade school part of education. You know, there’s this child care component that’s like, it’s cool for, you know, for seven hours a day, five days a week, we gotcha. How much I wish that were true. Because if you’re the parent of a kid with special needs, it’s often not. It’s a full-time job as librarian. There are full time jobs I’d like to apply for trying to figure out a way or living beyond 15 hours a week, a little online job that I do. Living on my savings that I’m lucky to have. I don’t know how other people in my place do it. But if your kid won’t go to school, or if your school despite their legal responsibility would accommodate your kid without major damage then no, seven hours a day, five days a week. They don’t Gotcha.

Gloria Riviera

Yeah, they get me to every time and I want to say something directly to the last mom that you heard. Laura, I want you to know that we are working hard on that very topic now. Child care and early education for kids with special needs. It is an important and overlooked topic. And we have very smart people all over the country helping us find the right way to do that issue justice. It will be coming. So Laura, I got you. Thank you for that beautifully raw and awful moment. If you want to send in a voice memo, please do so it is so easy. Take out your phone recorded on the fly. When the spirit moves you when it is messy and raw. We love messy and raw. That’s what this is all about. All you need to do is to record a voice memo on your phone, and then just send it along to me at gloria@lemonadamedia.com. We will get it we will share it. We will remind you are not alone. Okay, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. That is more than enough from me. We do have some great shows coming up. Next week I’ll be talking to Wendy Lee Marty about a very, very cool event her organization is running it is called A Day Without Child Care. We will talk about why they’re holding this day and what you can do, what steps you can take to get involved. Then the week after that I get to talk to Liz Tenety She is the co-founder of Motherly Inc. and she is the host of the Motherly podcast. We are going to talk about how we fix this system so that mothers can thrive. Okay, all right. That’s it for now. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you back here next week.

CREDITS

NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US is a Lemonada media original presented by and created with Neighborhood Villages. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease and Alex McOwen, Veronica Rodriguez is our engineer music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me Gloria Riviera. If you like the show, and you believe what we’re doing is important. Please help others find us by leaving us a rating and writing us a review. Do you have your own experiences and frustrations with the childcare system? Do you have ideas for what we could do to make it better? Join the no one is coming to save us Facebook group where we can continue the conversation together. You can also follow us and other Lemonada podcasts at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back next week. Until then hang in there. You can do it.