This grant will fund guest speakers for Michigan Law’s Problem Solving Initiative on addressing the child care crisis. This Problem Solving Initiative is a graduate-level multidisciplinary course with students from the schools of law, public policy, public health, and social work. These graduate students are placed in interdisciplinary teams and will apply the “socially engaged design” problem solving framework to come up with policy and program solutions to the child care crisis. At the end of the semester, teams will present their capstone projects to experts in government and policy.

This semester, the students have narrowed their focus to creating solutions to attract, retain, and engage child care providers. This grant would provide monetary support to have five current child care providers (directors, lead teachers, and assistant teachers) come speak to the students and share important expertise, background, and opinions on the causes of the child care crisis. This crucial information would form the basis for many of the groups’ capstone projects. Given that the child care providers will have to miss a day of work and are typically paid on an hourly basis, we would like to offer compensation to make the visits a viable option for them.