Oklahoma’s New ‘Care for Kids’ Campaign Offers $1000 Incentive to Child Care Professionals

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — The demand for childcare professionals in Oklahoma is high, and the state is now funding an initiative to boost employment in the industry.

The Care for Kids campaign is working to combat the child care worker shortage by offering a $1,000 employment incentive to licensed child care professionals.

Oklahoma is facing a critical worker shortage, with many parents being forced to stay home and take care of their children because they are unable to find adequate child care, making the shortage even worse.

“Without having a workforce and childcare parents and mothers especially are not able to leave their children in these programs and spaces. So we’re looking to not only support mothers who are wanting to get back into the workforce, but we’re also looking to support mothers who might even want to join the childcare space and learn more about that profession,” said Director of Childcare services for Oklahoma Human Services, Brittany Lee.

As the workforce continues to struggle, so does Oklahoma’s economy,

“We really want to make sure that we’re driving the right professionals into this space, but also our economy. We need people working, we need people going back out, and just finding a way to support them is what we’re trying to do,” Lee said, “So we’re just looking to not only boost this childcare space but also support the workforce base within the entire state of Oklahoma.”

The Care for Kids campaign offers incentives to employ child care professionals and keep them employed,

“They are looking for great employees to care for our kids. And so we want to encourage it by doing this promotion that not only adds incentives to the people getting into this profession, we’re also helping to retain a lot of our employees by offering a retention bonus as well. So we’re just doing the best that we can to continue to enforce and support the workforce in childcare,” said Lee.

Oklahoma Human Services has over 2,900 child care programs, with plenty of openings.

For available child care positions across Oklahoma click here.