North Stars: Patricia Soutas-Little is a Rural Child-Care Champion

Article by Emily Tyra, March 15, 2024, Traverse Northen Michigan & MyNorth.com

Patricia Soutas-Little is trailblazing innovative new child care options for Northern Michigan families.

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When Leelanau County’s Patricia Soutas-Little became “gravely concerned” with the shortage of infant and toddler child care in her community, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

As the chair of the Leelanau Early Childhood Development Commission, she and an all-volunteer band of residents set out to “shine a flashlight from different sources” to create innovative, sustainable child care for working families in Leelanau County.

But in the wake of a handful of day care centers closing across the peninsula, Soutas- Little—a previous county commissioner and former faculty member in Michigan State University’s college of engineering—knew a fresh take was needed. She shares that centers can be prohibitively costly to operate to meet required ratios of staff-to- children, specifically those under the age of 3. They were seeking a new working model for home-based child care while “creating a balance between what parents can afford and what gives providers a living wage,” she says.

Soutas-Little knew that business chops were key to making any new home-based child care operation successful. So, the Infant & Toddler Childcare Startup (ITCS) initiative was born: a team of volunteer professionals offering personal coaching and providing assistance with everything from navigating state and local licensing regulations to financial forecasting and marketing.

ITCS was also seeded by a $318,000 grant from Lansing-based Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC) to provide startup expenses for things like toys, cribs and home renovations. But even with funding, and gurus waiting in the wings to help, they kept hitting an unexpected snag in recruiting potential providers. Many wanted to give a child care business a go but, for various reasons, not in their own homes.

Photo by Courtney Kent

Then came a serendipitous conversation with ECIC’s Child Care Innovation Fund Director, Joan Blough, who “opened the door to the [LARA] Child Care Licensing Bureau,” says Soutas-Little. After convening with the state bureau overseeing the licensing of child facilities, Leelanau County’s ITCS has been given an unprecedented variance to open a special “micro-center”—the first ever in Michigan. Now, an individual childcare provider can legally operate a “home-based” business at an approved site that is not their own home.

This variance made it possible for Northport resident Amalie Kristiansen to open Little Acorn micro-center in the former Leelanau Children’s Center, owned by the Village of Northport and leased by Northport Public School. Kristiansen is subleasing the space for Little Acorn for just a dollar a year and has already welcomed families who need child care at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula.

Soutas-Little says ITCS also helped with traditional home-based startups: Rhonda Mack’s Lake Leelanau Kids was the first, and Kriya Miller just opened Little Valley Daycare in her woodland cabin outside of Cedar, incorporating nature in the children’s learning and exploration. The ITCS team coached Miller through the licensing process, helped fund improvements to her home and mentored her in business planning and early childhood best practices.

Soutas-Little has emerged as a childcare trailblazer, illuminating a path forward for Leelanau’s youngest residents. While Leelanau is currently the only county in Michigan exploring this experimental model of care, it’s a beta test for other rural communities to expand their number of quality facilities. In the meantime, says Soutas-Little, the next two micro-centers in Leelanau County will open by the end of March or earlier. And, thanks to the efforts of Representative Betsy Coffia, the state just awarded $400,000 for ITCS to expand the micro-center concept to Grand Traverse and Benzie counties.