 Well, that's the Everly Brothers. We were playing the Everly Brothers. Why were we playing the Everly Brothers here in Aloha, United We Stand? Which airs at 12 noon every Thursday? Because we have an Everly Brother right here. Jim Everly. Do you have brothers? I do have two. An older one and a younger one. Do they sing? None of them sing. And we have Chordana Ferrera. I never met her. Chordana I didn't like. And both of these guys are from Patch. Let's see. Chordana is the Oahu coordinator. And Jim Everly is the preschool open doors program manager. Correct. Okay. So I guess we ought to investigate in our time here together, you guys. What Patch does? What does Patch do? Well, we do a lot of things. Our mission is to advance the quality and access of child care for all of the children of Hawaii. So we have, we manage several different programs, one of which is the preschool open doors program. And then the resource and referral program where people can call in and get referrals for licensed providers. In addition, we run several other programs that all coincide with our mission. Okay. So I'm a parent of a young child, say a preschool age child. What is that? How old am I if I'm preschool? Pre-school is usually four to five, sometimes three years old, depending on whether they can accept that child, but usually three to five years of age. Can I come to you? I say hi, Patch. Hi, Jordanna. Can you help me? What's that conversation like? You're going to be asking me if I qualify? No. So if you're looking for preschool, basically anybody can apply for preschool. So what we'll do if you call us is we'll ask a few questions about, you know, what type of care you're looking for. If it's preschool, what areas do you want it in? Do you want full-time, part-time care? Specific questions about your child, what you're looking for, and then we'll send you a list that's tailored to your needs. A list of schools? Of preschools, yeah. And then what you'll do from that point is contact all of those preschools, try to set up interviews with them, see if they have any openings for your child, and then from there you can move forward with the enrollment process if it's a good match for your family. Okay. If they qualify, they can also give them information about tuition assistance, which is the program I operate. The Department of Human Services program, Preschool Open Doors. So we're helping... So you're not both with Patch? Yes. You are? Yes. So we're under, it's all under the umbrella of Patch. So it's the resource and referral program along with Preschool Open Doors. So the resource and referral, if somebody calls in and let's say they're qualified, or the child is age qualified for my program, they can give them that information and tell them how to apply. If they're not qualified for our program, they also give them resources for financial assistance for other programs where their child will qualify for. Well, so it's cash money. I mean, you have funds that you dedicate and you pay the family or you pay the school? We pay the families, okay, and then the families will pay the school. Okay. Where do you get funds from? I assume that part of the money comes from the Aloha United Way because we're here on Aloha United We Stand, which is their show. Well, the actual subsidy money, the funding for that is from the Department of Human Services. We partner with Aloha United Way. There's a real integral part of our program and getting the word out because, you know, it's such a huge program, so well connected. We send out announcements to them for an application period for preschool open doors, and then they broadcast it out and, you know, goes out to all of their partners. Get the word out. So that's very valuable. That's a good partnership. Yes, absolutely. So how many kids right now are out there who you are helping in this program? Well, for preschool open doors, our goal is to this year for this school year, the 2016-2017 school year, is to help 1,800 kids, okay, statewide. Okay. Okay. We've got some additional money this year. In the last couple years, we've helped, you know, up to, you know, around 1,200 kids statewide attend preschool that normally wouldn't get an option to a chance to afford their preschool. Yeah. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about, you know, exactly what is a preschool and where it fits in the social landscape. But one thing I want to clarify is that the people who you help are disadvantaged. Am I right? Do they have to show you a need? For the preschool open doors program, yes. For resource and referral, no. Anybody can call us for R&R. Anybody who wants to send their child to any type of childcare can call us. We don't, you don't have to have a need for it. You just have to have a desire to want to send your child there. Okay. Yeah. So there's a difference between the two programs. Yes. For my program, preschool open doors, you do have to be income qualified. So the age of the child and the income limit, there are limits. For our program, the income limits are set a little higher than most other similar programs that are out there to the state. So more people qualify for our program. So we're kind of reaching into lower middle class too. Okay. So we, you know, we encourage them to apply too. So they, they normally won't qualify for other financial assistance for other programs, but they may with us. Okay. So, you know, that's important to get out to families too. And one, another key important piece of preschool open doors is that it's really unique to our program is that families don't have to have what's called an activity in the business. They don't have to be working or in school to qualify. So it's a school readiness program. So we can have stay at home mom or dads and unemployed parents homeless can they're eligible for our program because so they can apply and there's no need for that activity. Other programs that are giving financial assistance do require them to be in some kind of training school or work. So it's the parents need for childcare. So that makes it simple for you. It makes it go through that. Yeah, well, it's simpler for the parents because you never know what's going to happen. Maybe you get a job and then you qualify for a program. Something happens, whatever you get hurt injured and you lose your your financial assistance for your childcare or preschool, where with us, there's a safety net. It doesn't matter. That's not a that's not a part of the equation. So that's what's real unique about our program is, you know, your child, if you get into the program, he's going to be able to go the entire 12 months to pay the whole cost. No, there are limits. There can be some out of pocket expense. It's based on their income level and which preschool they choose. So it can cover 100% depending on the equation. And do you have a list of preschools that qualify? Well, that's not all preschools qualify. That's another good thing about our program is there's over 400 licensed preschools across the state. So they the parents have options. Okay, they can choose a preschool that's close to work or close to home or close to grandma or whatever however they want. That's okay with you. Yes. Yes. So because we're contracting with the parents paying the parents, they could choose faith based programs. Okay, so there's no issues with where they send their child. They have the choice. So that's great. It's big options. So let's talk for a minute about preschools. What exactly happens in a preschool? And how important is it to have our kids go to preschool? Well, there's I've got 10 good reasons right here. Well, we're the same age, aren't we? From age three to five, there's 90% of the child's brain development. That's when that's happening. So it's a real critical age to get your child into an environment that's real educationally rich. Okay, socially and then also is, you know, academically. So, you know, kindergarten is becoming more and more academic. So this is a precursor to that. So it's real important to try to get your child into preschool to prepare for that. Prepare for kindergarten. You prepare for kindergarten? Yes, soon enough, we'll have a program that helps you prepare for preschool. Well, the earlier you start, the better off there's long term benefits to that. You know, all the studies show that there are you're ready for kindergarten. You're on track for third grade reading level. You're there's fewer special education placements. These children tend to go on to, you know, graduate from high school and go on to higher education. Less children are placed in special needs programs. So you have statistical. Yes, yeah, just goes to preschool. He's likely to do better. Yes. Not only in school, but in a life in life, very formative years, so to speak. Right. So it's not just the child has benefitting. It's the community. It's all of us. You know, so you want to get them early, get them started into the school. I did not. That was so you wish it would have been 56 years ago. It would have been that would be I would have been in preschool. So no, I didn't go in those days. It wasn't a big thing. It's different now. Now we have the data. It's not just a latchkey thing. That's what, you know, I worry about that. You know, and this relates to what you do to you know, you know, I don't have time for this kid. I got to do other things. I'm busy. So let's just put them in preschool and get get them out of the house. Well, it's to their advantage. You know, and that's a that's a real important thing. You know, it's their people can be great parents and be really engaged with their children and and do a lot of the things that the trained professionals do in preschool. You know, are they getting the social environment with that, you know, so that that's another social aspect. They get to socialize. Other kids, they might not otherwise do that at all. Correct. So they're learning how to interact with other adults outside of the house, along with children and groups, and situations like that. So they're learning how to interplay, you know, with other children without, you know, you would correctly doing it without it being adversarial. You know, I want that toy. And that age is very important. Yeah, you're learning all of these social aspects that you know, we need in life, proper. So this is the state policy. The state policy is saying, we want kids to go to preschool. It's a good thing. We're going to fund that. Yeah, it's a program. I don't know if I'd call it policy. But yes, that's making the program available. It's important. They recognize that the early education community has worked very, very hard to get this into the forefront of, you know, our legislators. And so it's, it's come down into the Department of Human Services has made this program available. Okay, let's go to the companion program now. So referring families out for childcare. And that means what? This is different market, different situation? No, preschool is still largely considered childcare. But for the resource and referral program, we can assist families with children of any age from birth to about five. So they call us even if they want to go to 56. No, okay, sorry. Yeah, so any child any age, there's three main types of childcare in the state of Hawaii that are licensed. So there's licensed family childcare home. So those are people who open up their home. So your child goes to the home? Yes. So the families drop off the child at the provider's home. Okay. And this is while they're working and usually the child at this point is not in preschool. He's not she is we we little thing. Usually how old is the child in this program. So in family childcare, they can actually accept children up to 13 years of age. So young birth, usually. So it's really hard to accept to the provider if they want to accept newborn children, they can do that. Give give a child from birth to somebody else. If they don't have any other options. Yeah, they have to work. You know, I mean, wow, it sounds hard. I mean, what I mean is going to your point, Jim, about how kids are so suggestible, so informed at early ages. Don't parents want to spend every moment with them, especially at birth? Because if you don't do that, you get a you get a problems, I believe, right? Yeah, I would say most parents probably do want to but with a lot of the economic demands and stressors that go on nowadays, it's very hard to do that. If your business or company doesn't offer paid maternity or paternity leave, you know, parents don't really have options. If you don't have family members that can take care of the child. That's where child care comes Okay, so that's this program one or that phase is phase one. What's phase two phase two. So infant toddler centers so they can also care for children typically from a few months old to about three and then preschool would be beyond that. Okay, what the same situation where you take the child to the home of someone else and that person watches over the child. Well, infant toddler centers are center based care centers. Yeah, they're kind of preschools, but it's more than one child and that are younger. Yeah. Yeah. And other centers, separate facilities, you know, separate brick and mortar, or they somebody's home. The center base is an actual facility. So it's same thing like a preschool and actually a lot of infant toddler centers are also preschools. So they might be in that same building, but they might have infant toddler classrooms and then preschool classrooms separated. Okay, yeah, okay. And this goes to the socialization issue. Because, you know, it's good to start socializing kids in an early age, make some healthier as they grow up. Well, keep in mind, too, when we're referring out, we only refer licensed providers. So what that means, these people have gone through training, they're professionals. Okay, so it's not somebody that just opens the door and says, Okay, I'm going to start accepting and they had kids. Yes. Yes, it's a business. When we come back from this break, Jim, we'll find out what they get paid and what kind of training they get, and exactly how reliable can they be in the circumstance. And how much should I rely on them if I'm a parent? Okay, that's Jim Everly. He's not related to the Everly Brothers and not going to sing for us today. Not today. He's the preschool open doors program manager in patch. And we have Jordanna Ferrera. She's the Oahu coordinator of patch will be right back. You'll see. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to think tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show education movers, shakers, and reformers here on think tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Hello, how are you doing there, lassies and laddies? This is Angus mctech here on think tech Hawaii. And I have my favorite show. He bought she talked with my good old buddies, good old the tech side and Andrew the security guy. Please join us every Monday. No, it's Friday every Friday from 1pm to 1.30pm. He had on think tech Hawaii and you can also find us on YouTube. He bought she talked. Hello. We're back. We're here. Aloha United. We stand our show at 12 noon every Thursday. And today we have Jordanna Ferrera, Oahu coordinator of patch and Jim Everly preschool open doors program manager of patch and patch is what does that stand for one more time? People attentive to children. I love it. But you know of Vista. Vista is a person who is working in service of America volunteers in service of the country. I love that. So same thing. Great acronym. Thank you. We want to attach it the H to say people attended the Children Hawaii. It's this patch and the C H is children. So when a lot of people don't put it together, we thought well, we'll tag on Hawaii under that. Okay. So we were before we broke. We were going to talk about how you get to be training for a child care worker, a licensed child care worker, and what you get paid if you choose to do that. So can you help us with this or that? Yeah, sure. So it really depends on the type of setting. For payment, it's because they are operating their own business. It's ultimately up to them. For family child care providers, the statewide full time monthly average is about 6 to 700 a month per child. Yes. For infant toddler centers, that's the most expensive type of care. It's about 1000 to 1200 a month per child. So if I have the money that I'd rather have my kid there, because why there's more staff there, there's more expertise there. Why? Why is it more money? So for infant toddler centers, it requires more work usually because they're little little babies that can't really move or talk quite yet. There does there is a requirement for the student teacher ratio is a lot smaller with infants and toddlers because they're a little bit more demanding. So a lot of infant toddler center providers or even family child care providers that care for infants and toddlers are really focusing on meeting the social emotional needs tending to the baby if they're crying, feeding, diapering a lot of the health and safety stuff. Whereas in preschool, you know, these children typically can talk, they can walk, they can play. So they're a little bit more independent. So preschools focusing more on that independence and guiding them and fostering them in that. Whereas with infants, it's more about their social emotional development. Hands on. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's not bad. But how does that differ from foster care? Is it more or less or what? Foster care is more like, so they have resource caregivers, which used to be foster parents. And so that's more like taking in a child into your home and sort of being that guardian. Stays over. Yes, every night, lives with you. And those families with foster children might have a need for our services. Oh, I see. You could have a foster parent who absolutely uses your services for child care or preschool or combination. Actually, for our program, children that are in foster care would actually get a higher priority to get into the program. Yeah, because you need more somehow. Yeah. Yeah. At risk or underserved children always are prioritized for our program. And this is the judgment call that you make in your own policy, the program policy through the department of services. Okay, let's talk about training now. The training the same for these programs or is it different? It's different. So for family child care providers, they do have to go through some type of professional development. So that could include a training class. It could include reading articles on topics about, you know, their field or about child development or anything like that. Typically with center based providers, they have a set minimum of hours that they have to complete. So I think for infant toddler centers, it's 30 hours to become an infant toddler center provider, preschool, I can't remember the minimum, but they do have to take training classes aimed at professional development. So if I want to join your program, well, I guess I do want to ask you, are they knocking the door down? Who's knocking, who's door down about this? I mean, do you have more child applicants than you have money and spots? You have more workers, child development, child care workers, then you have money as well. Where's the pressure? So statewide, we're actually at about 95% capacity for all types of care. So what that means funding? No, that means lots of physical, physical capacity. So what that means is a lot of these childcare facilities don't have much room to accept children. So the demand is pretty high compared to the supply. So we're not at 100% capacity yet. But a lot of preschools, a lot of infant toddler centers are struggling, you know, to accept children. A lot of places have really long wait list. We get a lot of parents who call and say, I need another list because there were no openings. So cost is the biggest reason why parents have issues finding childcare and then it's openings. But let me offer a thought. See if you agree, is if you have 95% you know, then you really have more. In other words, a lot of people not not getting the service. And that's because they're on enough facilities. It's funny, it runs a parallel to housing, doesn't it? We haven't built enough housing. Likewise, we haven't built enough childcare facilities. And we need to do both of those things that we're going to service our population, especially our disadvantaged population. Well, Patch also recruits family childcare providers. So we are involved with trying to meet that demand. So we can we have actually a staff member that goes out and people that are maybe doing this. They're not licensed. Maybe they're on Craigslist advertising that they'll watch children will approach them, try to get them to come into the fold and be licensed and we can actually walk them through the licensing. So you would even recruit somebody who is not licensed to get them licensed. Yes. That means they get the training. You need people. You don't have enough people knocking on your door as licensed people and you have to go find them. Well, there's a lot of reasons why that's the case. One of it is for center based care. There's a lot of turnover with staffing. You know, if a staff member calls out sick one day, you have to still meet the racial requirements for licensing and if racial requirements are ratio ratio, what is that? That's so for preschool, it's one teacher for eight students or infants. It's one to four, right? So if your staff member calls out sick and you don't have that teacher, sometimes that means you can't accept certain children. So that's a big issue too in the field. It sounds like the system is under a bit of strain and stress here simply by the availability of assets and personnel. Am I right? I mean, we struck on something here. Yeah. Okay. I think we have. Okay. I'll take that as a yes. But we're doing everything we can to address this too. In addition to the recruiting and helping people get licensed, we also offer the training for these folks. You do the training. Yes. That you were talking about your time. That training you guys handled. Yeah. So then they can get licensed through the DHS. What's the licensing procedure like? Is there bureaucracy involved? If I, you know, retake, spend 30 hours and read stuff and I want to do this and I want to get a little bread for my efforts and all, I got to go to the Department of Health and Human Services. Where do I go? So it depends on the type of care again. So if you want to start up a home based care, yeah, you're going to have to call DHS and get an application. You're going to have to go through fingerprinting, background checks, all that good stuff to make sure that fingerprinting. Yep. Maybe I can drive an Uber taxi or at the same time. Oh, it's a joke. You could, I guess. They require, or they, people want them to require fingerprints too. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, yeah. So it goes through this and how long does it take? It really depends on the provider and on the DHS office. So if a provider is really quick and motivated and they finish their parent handbook policy and their house is up to standards and then DHS is able to get in there and inspect it, it could take a few months. We have a lot of providers who, if you have a need, isn't that a long time? Yes, it is. Yeah. And sometimes it takes people a few years. It just really depends where they're at. A lot of people are renovating their home. So if the renovations aren't done, they can't get back in. That'd be a condition of the license. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. In total, how many licensed workers are there, can you say, in the state? Family child care? On Oahu alone, we have a total of 608 providers total. Statewide for all types of care, we have a little over a thousand. Okay. So we have a couple minutes left. Tell me where this is going. Where's it going for patch? You know, what do you see in the future? And where's it going for you, individually, if you don't mind asking? Jim? Well, for a patch, we're going to continue on our mission. And we if opportunities come up that other programs that we might be able to get involved with will certainly go down that path. Personally, you know, I've been with this organization for seven years. It's a great company. I really like what we're doing. Why? What is it about? Well, we're helping families, you know, needy families and helping the community. So it's really when you're doing your job and that you're giving back to the community at the same time. That's a real good feeling to have. You know, you feel, you know, hopefully, you know, we're meeting all of the needs, you know, they're put in front of us. So it's it's rewarding. Okay. So how do you feel about about patch? Yeah, I like patch. Okay. No, I love patch. I love the work we do. I think for me, like Jim said, we're helping families in the community. But for me, the number one thing is the children. You know, I think when you have a little, little baby, and you're there and you're watching them grow and develop, it's really amazing, you know, what they learn, what they're doing. And like Jim mentioned earlier, 90% of your brain development is happening before you turn five, which means that for the rest of your life, that's 10%. You know, so most of what you're learning is happening before the age of five. And it's really amazing when you can watch a child. You get a chance to do that. Yeah, I have a nephew. He's almost two years old. But in patch, you get a chance to go out and see how this is all playing out in the homes and in the facility. Yeah, definitely. Sometimes we do have some staff members who go out into the home a lot more often than Jim and I get a chance to do, but you're at the receiving end. Somebody else is, yeah, I don't get an opportunity to go into people's homes to see this. But you know, you see it with your family and friends, you know, with their children. Yeah. You know, the impact that these programs have. The children are our most important resource. We have to take care of them and build them the best we possibly can. They are, they are their teacher. Thank you so much. Jordanna Ferreira, a Wabu co-ordinator and Jim Everly, preschool open drawers program manager at Patch. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us.