Breaking Down Barriers: San Antonio Provides Pathway to Better Jobs by Easing Childcare Burden
By Jeremy Gantz
In today’s society, those who can afford childcare are ahead of the game, and those who cannot often find themselves marginalized from the working world. Caregiving — so often the responsibility of women — acts as an obstacle to stable employment and economic mobility. Women are often forced to “self-eliminate” from the labor market, restricting opportunities and limiting earning potential, says Amy Contreras, assistant to director in the City of San Antonio’s Workforce Development Office (WDO). This dynamic can drive poverty across generations.
“In so many ways, access to childcare serves as an engine of progress,” Contreras says. But the reality is that today, in San Antonio and so many other cities, big gaps in the childcare landscape are the norm. In San Antonio, which has one of the highest poverty rates among the top ten largest U.S. cities, 55% of households living in poverty have a single female as head of household — and a majority of those caregivers are Black or Latina who face significant barriers to workforce participation.
The City’s Ready to Work (RTW) program was launched in 2022 to support these caregivers and other city residents facing employment challenges. The $230 million anti-poverty and workforce development initiative powers workforce stability and economic mobility by removing barriers and by preparing people for in-demand, quality jobs. Funded by a sales tax overwhelmingly approved by voters in late 2020, RTW offers eligible residents free tuition for certificates and degrees, career coaching and job placement services, among other targeted resources.
“Our goal is to take people from where they are to where they want to go, after two years of training,” says Contreras, who helps oversee RTW.
To improve female Black and Latina caregivers’ success rates in RTW and unlock job opportunities, WDO and its partner organizations in 2022 began working with the Opportunity Accelerator (OA). The collaborative initiative led by Results for America helps government address racial disparities and promote economic mobility.
These caregivers “are the most burdened population that we have,” Contreras says. “If we can address their issues, then we can address other people’s issues as well.”
Listening to Lived Experiences
As the OA lead partner on overall strategy and implementation in San Antonio, Results for America prioritized understanding the lived experiences of women going through the RTW program. To that end, in the summer of 2023, the Opportunity Accelerator interviewed women at different stages of their RTW journey, including individuals who dropped out during the intake process.
Ready to Work staff has already acted on interview-based insights. For example, RTW made online training course catalogs more user-friendly, and redesigned intake and enrollment phases of the program to create a more consistent experience across contractor organizations. (All RTW services are delivered by contractors.) Interviews also revealed an opportunity to better support women with longer-term financial planning needs and the merits of leaving a job to complete a degree program.
But the most important upshot of the caregiver interviews was something bigger, says Danny Herrera, Director of Strategy & Implementation at Results for America. “The interview process made clear that centering residents’ lived experiences should be a core part of WDO’s strategy and activities — with respect to RTW and more broadly,” he says. “It’s an important shift that will help the City drive progress.”
A similar shift has happened inside Bexar County, which encompasses San Antonio. In 2022 and early 2023, OA worked with the County’s Economic & Community Development office (ECD), helping its workforce development programs better understand the lived experiences and challenges of the populations, including Black and Latina caregivers. Additionally, Bexar County ECD and the OA collaborated on improving data infrastructure to better support residents enrolled in the TX FAME advanced manufacturing technician training program. Greater data capacity allows the government to understand the focus population — and develop metrics to track equitable population-level outcomes in Bexar County.
Bexar County has a target in mind for the region’s workforce: 70% of high school graduates in Bexar County enrolling in a degree or credential program by 2030. Reaching this goal requires coordination and collaboration across organizations working to get residents the training they need to thrive, a goal that was created under the community-wide strategic plan called the Future Ready Bexar Plan. To that end, OA’s engagement in Bexar County brought leaders together to share knowledge and brainstorm ways to overcome historical service delivery challenges. These leaders represent Bexar County, the City of San Antonio, the UP Partnership (the nonprofit in charge of moving the Plan forward) and the United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County (a key funder of youth-serving direct service providers).
“OA has done a great job of walking alongside our city’s Workforce Development Office, helping them to better hear the wisdom of the community residents and to put that wisdom into action,” says Ryan Lugalia-Hollon, CEO of UP Partnership. “It’s a great example of community voice in action, which is one of the three key equity pillars in our countywide plan for young people.”
There are signs of progress. The number of Latina and Black women enrolling in and completing RTW program training has risen since 2022. And preliminary WDO data shows a 20% boost in the median earnings (from $15 to $18 per hour) of residents who have found jobs after completing the program. (Detailed program metrics are here.)
Zeroing in on Childcare
Continued progress requires close attention to all barriers that even the most motivated people face when trying to seize training and employment opportunities. Take transportation, for example. Providing individuals with bus passes may help some people reach a job site, but taxi and rideshare coupons may be necessary to reach other jobs.
“You can’t just look at the big picture,” Contreras says. “You have to dive into the fine details.”
Healthcare and manufacturing employers desperately need more people — but the fact they don’t provide childcare and have around-the-clock shifts poses significant barriers, she notes.
Given how crucial childcare is for the economic mobility of Black or Latina caregivers, WDO is ramping up efforts on that front. In the fall of 2023 it conducted a childcare access and needs survey of RTW enrollees with OA support; more than 641 people responded. Analysis of survey data will help the City identify which childcare providers it should contract with, as well as where and how it should expand offerings.
“We need to understand caregivers’ specific needs — the number of childcare hours needed per week and ideal locations given where people live and go to school,” Contreras says, noting that RTW funding can directly subsidize childcare providers. “Could we expand childcare options offered at community colleges, for example? That might be a relatively easy fix.”
Removing childcare-related barriers to economic mobility will be a big focus of RTW and Results for America in 2024, along with active contract management best practices to improve RFP language and service delivery, she says. WDO may also work up a “lessons learned” case study detailing RTW’s first few years.
The City of San Antonio is fortunate to have dedicated tax-based funding to build out the program strategically. But Contreras says valuable workforce development progress can happen without such revenues. Real change can happen when governments commit to two crucial things.
“You need to align workforce training offerings to what employers need,” she says. “And you need to commit to understanding and breaking down the barriers that hold people back.”
The Opportunity Accelerator is a collaborative initiative — led by Results for America and in collaboration with the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, Code for America, the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab, and the W. Haywood Burns Institute — that supports government in promoting economic mobility, reducing racial disparities, and improving the wellbeing of their residents. The Opportunity Accelerator was funded by Blue Meridian Partners from July 2020 to December 2023.
