Bridging the Gap: How Mercer County Leaders Teamed Up with the Buhl Regional Health Foundation to Expand Local Childcare
Access to quality childcare isn’t just a convenience for working parents — it is a central part of a thriving, healthy community. Yet, across Mercer County, families have faced a challenging reality: a critical shortage of available childcare slots, limited evening hours, and a system stretched to its limits.
While exploring the childcare needs of Mercer County and the providers who implement services for families and their children, the Buhl Regional Health Foundation (BRHF) team started by recognizing that access to quality childcare is one of the Seven Vital Conditions for health and well-being*
Beginning in 2024, BRHF’s Childcare Center Expansion Program was created to address the critical shortage of childcare services in the region. This program represents BRHF’s commitment to optimizing the well-being of our community’s children. By investing in childcare infrastructure, the BRHF helps parents, caregivers, and families balance their work schedules and ensures that children receive the early developmental support necessary to flourish long term. Organizations participating are typically non-profits serving Mercer County.
“When we launched the RFP process, our goal was very clear to improve the health and well-being of children in Mercer County by strengthening childcare services, whether that meant increasing staff, expanding space, or extending hours,” said Kimberly Porsch, Director of Grantmaking, Buhl Regional Health Foundation. “What we found was something even more powerful. Zion Education Center needed to extend hours, Baughman Family Community Center needed to expand space, and Building Blocks Education Center needed additional staff. In many ways, each organization reflected exactly one of the needs we were hoping to address.
Rather than choosing between them, we made the decision to fund all three and bring them together as a Childcare Center Learning Cohort. That has been the most meaningful part of this work and we are no longer simply a funder. We are in partnership with these providers, learning alongside them and supporting one another.
Through this cohort, we are seeing what is possible when community organizations, childcare providers, and funders come together with a shared goal. Our investments are helping strengthen staffing, improve learning environments, expand service hours, and better support working families. Ultimately, this is not just about increasing access to childcare but it is about building stronger foundations for children’s long-term growth, and health. The leadership of these organizations reflects the kind of collaboration that can truly move a community forward.”
This initiative specifically focuses on the expansion of existing childcare facilities to increase availability for children. By providing financial resources, BRHF is helping local providers by:
- Adding: Extended service hours into the evening.
- Expanding Capacity: Equipping new or existing classrooms to accommodate more infants, toddlers, and school-aged children.
- Enhancing Quality: Obtaining modern educational materials, curriculum resources, and health-related equipment.
- Building Infrastructure: Supporting minor renovations, facility upgrades (e.g. ADA accessibility), and the hiring of qualified staff to ensure safe, high-quality environments.
It is important to hear directly from the local providers themselves about what this program means to them as leaders in regional childcare programs and to the families and caregivers they support.
The following are testimonial excerpts that have been condensed for use in this article:
Zion Education Center at St. John’s Academy (Dr. April Torrence and Amira McLean)
The foundation’s support allowed us to make progress with the following accomplishments:
- Promoting staff to the director level to manage start-up responsibilities, including licensing requirements through the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services
- Securing our facility onsite, including outdoor fencing and security cameras for staff and student safety
- Purchasing required classroom supplies and equipment
- Positioning our childcare center as a resource for businesses in downtown Sharon, PA particularly employers with afternoon shift staff who need reliable childcare
BRHF’s investment is strengthening our ability to meet community needs, and we expect its impact to grow as enrollment increases.
We are building momentum for our expanded afternoon/evening childcare at St. John’s Academy to extend our impact within the communities we serve. Because we opened after the school year had begun, many families had already secured childcare elsewhere. The Buhl Regional Health Foundation’s support has given us the opportunity to reach parents who work afternoon shifts; many of whom struggle because most facilities close before 6:00 p.m. This expansion offers real hope for families needing non-traditional hour childcare, and we are working to add transportation to increase capacity.
Because of the Buhl Regional Health Foundation, we have been contracted to provide supportive services to childcare programs in Mercer, Ben, and Crawford Counties.
Building Blocks Child Center (Carrie Brown)
In early 2022 Building Blocks was near a crisis with increased behavioral challenges among the children, which resulted in staff burnout and turnover. Because of the impact this had on the children, families, and staff we realized that having increased staff in the classrooms would allow us to better serve our Building Blocks children and families. The BRHF funding has created an opportunity for change that allowed Building Blocks to increase our staff and reduce our child-to-teacher ratios and improve our services in the following ways, including but not limited to:
- Providing enhanced classroom small-group and individualized instruction. This instruction is data-driven and based on each learner’s individual needs, as well as the Pennsylvania Early Learning Standards, which align with the learning goals utilized in our Mercer County school districts.
- Providing our children with meaningful and relevant instruction. Our teaching staff has more time and patience to establish a positive and trusting relationship with all educators in the classroom.
- Dig deeper into our social emotional program and focus on emotion regulation and how to respond to those “big emotions”. Social emotional learning is at the forefront of our responsibilities as early childhood educators and this collaboration with BRHF has enabled us to focus on Social Emotional skills with our children.
- Allows us to bridge the gap between home and school, as we are able to send home materials, resources, and manipulatives with our families so students have tools they can physically handle or use digitally to understand abstract concepts.
- Another valued outcome is that our educators have increased patience for the children, which creates less pressure and stress on our staff to satisfy the developmental and social needs of all learners.
This investment matters to the community, because our youth are the future of our community! Empowering our youth is investing not only in our present community but also in our future. This investment is monumental in that quality childcare in our community is much needed and we provide that for many families. This project impacts our community by allowing us to provide more developmental and social emotional opportunities to young learners, which broadens our education outreach to lay a stable foundation for our learner’s educational career. This sets them up for success throughout their school career.
Baughman Family Community Center (BFCC), Child Development Center (CDC) (Jordan Batt)
A scene from the childcare center at Baughman Family Community Center
Thanks to this support, we now serve children from infancy through Pre-K, providing quality care and education for all early childhood age groups. We also increased our staffing to ensure each new classroom has the support it needs.
The funding has also benefited our CDC in meaningful ways. We were able to purchase new toys, rugs, chairs, and other classroom essentials, making the environment more comfortable, welcoming, and engaging for our children. These upgrades have not only brought joy to our kids and staff but also reassured families that we are committed to providing a safe, nurturing space where their children can learn, grow, and thrive at Baughman CDC. We believe we have the best classroom for infants in all of Mercer County.
Because of the BRHF support, in short, this has changed everything we do, all for the good. The expansion of our CDC has been a valuable addition to the organization’s overall mission. We have successfully engaged more children and families with the Baughman Center, which is always a positive development. The childcare program has enhanced the center’s profile and built more credibility within the community, often leading to ongoing and future support.
Our organization has also seen an increase in enrollment at our CDC, bringing more families into BFCC. Additionally, we’ve experienced growth in our family memberships and participation in the preschool programs we offer. Much of this progress is directly due to expanding our CDC classrooms and welcoming more young families to the Baughman Center. Without this Buhl Regional Health Foundation funding, many of these positive changes could have been delayed—or might not have occurred at all.
Interested in upcoming opportunities to be a part of a learning cohort through the Buhl Regional Health Foundation? Email us at info@buhlrhf.org to let us know!
*Footnote Source: Created by the Rippel Foundation, the Seven Vital Conditions for Well-Being is a useful framework for conceptualizing holistic well-being and the Conditions that give rise to it, as well as identifying levers for community change and improvement. For more information, visit https://rippel.org/vital-conditions/.