John’s Pharmacy takes childcare for its employees into own hands

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KBSI) – Cape Girardeau is looking at expanding the childcare community for its growing population.

But one company is taking the matter into their own hands.

“I just had enough,” said Abe Funk, owner of John’s Pharmacy in Cape Girardeau.

He is opening a new childcare facility strictly for his employee’s use.

“We had a problem with our staff not being able to find adequate, and appropriate childcare for their own children,” said Funk.

He wanted his employees to have access to good, quality childcare for a better work life balance.

“We went through many years of working with staff, interviewing potential staff, and having to not hire some really quality individuals,” said Funk.

According to the Office of Childhood with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, there are more than 5,000 children under the age of six just in Cape Girardeau alone and of those children more than 4,000 have working parents, ;eaving more 500 children with nowhere to go.

“We would have loved to have seen the legislature pass the governor’s recommendations for tax credits,” said Funk. “That would have been a huge help, not just for our childcare facility but for all the childcare facilities and to allow more to open.”

Olivea Staires is a southeast Missouri mother of two. She says she wishes more companies would consider bringing in childcare for their employees.

‘This will probably never happen, but…I would love for my place of employment to have a daycare accessible just for employees,” Staire said. “You know you wouldn’t have people coming in saying, ‘Hey I can’t come in, I don’t have anybody to watch my kids.’ And you know having your employer help you out with that, would help you so much like give you that empowerment like I’m important here, and my kids are important to you as well.”

Staires wishes she could return to full-time work, but to do so would require her to have her children in separate daycare centers and would take most of her paycheck to pay for.

“I feel like for moms in America, it’s either, you have the career, and you don’t spend time with your kids, or you have no career, and people put you down for that,” said Staires.

A lack of accessible and affordable childcare gives reason to parents to leave the workforce.

During the pandemic, women left the workforce at twice the rate of men.

According to the United States Census Bureau, around one in five of working-age adults said the reason they were not working was because Covid-19 disrupted their childcare arrangements.

Of those not working, women ages 25 to 44 are almost three times as likely as men to not be working due to childcare demands.

About one in three of these women are not working because of the lack of childcare, compared to the 12% of men in the same age group.