Vacancy Dashboard

The C3 Vacancy Dashboard is an interactive tool that highlights child care openings by type of program, age group, quality rating and near-real-time availability.

Note: Age group vacancy totals may not always match overall vacancy totals. The dashboard only displays records that have been provided or updated in the last 60 days.

For the best experience, please use a home computer or tablet to view the data within this dashboard.

Terms and Definitions

Child care in every state looks a little different, and we also have multiple data systems collecting and maintaining information about providers. The following definitions provide background about Iowa child care and details about how data were used in C3 to generate the best combined data from across these systems for reporting the dashboards.

IOWA CHILD CARE

Type of care: Iowa’s child care options include licensed centers, registered child development homes, and non-registered child care homes, with centers serving larger groups in commercial settings and homes providing care in residential spaces.

Child development home: care for a small group of children and operate in a residential space, such as a house, apartment, or condo unit. There are three categories of child development homes, ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C.’ Requirements and the number of children allowed in care at any one time increases as you move from ‘A’ to ‘C.’

Iowa Quality for Kids (IQ4K®) is Iowa’s voluntary Quality Rating and Improvement System. There are five levels of quality programs can achieve. For more information please visit Iowa CCR&R.

CCR&R Region: a grouping of counties assigned to a specific Child Care Resource and Referral Agency. For more information, please visit Iowa CCR&R.

Child Care Assistance (CCA) helps pay for child care while a parent or caretaker works or is in school, or when they are looking for work or temporarily unable to care for children because of medical reasons. For more information, please visit Iowa HHS Child Care Assistance

KEY TERMS

Total Providers: total number of programs providing regulated care for children 12 and under that are registered or licensed by the state of Iowa.

% Providers Reporting: percentage of total child care providers who have updated or confirmed their vacancies in the past 60 days in at least one data system.

Total Vacancies: total number of available openings reported by a child care facility. Only vacancies reported or confirmed from at least one data source within the last 60 days are counted. Vacancy is shown as 0 when openings reported is greater than licensed capacity. Age group vacancy totals may not match total vacancy due to differences in reporting methods and that some providers may have an opening that could be filled by multiple age groups.

Providers at Capacity: percentage of child care providers who report no vacancies divided by the total number of child care providers.

Desired Capacity: number of total children by age group that a child care program/provider reports that they are capable of and interested in caring for at a given time. This includes having sufficient space and workforce to care for the quantity of children desired. (note: this is not licensed capacity, which is often higher for most programs than their true desired capacity)

Child care supply is determined by the number of children that can be cared for at one time using the providers desired capacity number. When providers have not provided desired capacity numbers in the last 60 days, licensed capacity is used to determine supply.

Child care demand is generated using several estimates. First, birth record data in Iowa was used to generate a 100% estimate of all children, by age, who may need care at any given time. This assumes that all children born in Iowa stay in Iowa. A 76% estimate provides a revised count based on research suggesting that only 76% of families with young children have all caregivers in the workforce. A third estimate of 67% is provided based on additional research that considers additional choices families may make where they may not need care.