Where are Sonoma County’s child care deserts?

Several regions of Sonoma County, including the majority of Santa Rosa, do not have enough access to child care, according to an interactive map published by the Center for American Progress.

The interactive map highlights places across the United States with child care deserts ― areas where demand exceeds the space available in state-licensed child care programs.

In Sonoma County, parts of Santa Rosa, Sonoma Valley and west county have inadequate access to child care, along with small areas of Windsor, Petaluma and Rohnert Park.

The majority of Santa Rosa, including Roseland, South Santa Rosa and Coffey Park, are child care deserts. Mark West, the Monroe District in west Santa Rosa and a large swath of east Santa Rosa are among the few neighborhoods in the city with adequate child care.

Although Sonoma has sufficient access to child-care programs, according to the data, Fetters Springs and Agua Caliente also are child care deserts.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank, collaborated with researchers at the University of Minnesota to publish the map in June 2020. Researchers first analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data to determine the number of families with children under age 5 in a census block. They then compared that data to the number of licensed programs within a 20-minute drive.

Researchers also analyzed how child care deserts relate to communities’ racial demographics, median income, education levels and home values.

The map shows that areas of west county near Guerneville and Sonoma Valley have high poverty rates, although the highest in Sonoma County is the northern half of Roseland.

Nationally, regions with middle-income families or predominately Latinx populations are most likely to be child care deserts, The 19th and The Washington Post reported. Rural areas also tend to have limited child care access.

Not all of these nationwide trends apply to Sonoma County, though. Some regions with a large number of Latinx residents, including the Monroe District, have adequate access to care, according to the data.

Median family income levels also don’t necessarily correlate to the number of child care deserts in the county. Neighborhoods in Windsor and Santa Rosa with high median incomes and neighborhoods in Sonoma Valley with low median incomes both struggle with access to child care.

The extent that the pandemic has affected child care deserts is unclear, although the number of providers and available spaces has decreased since the map was originally published. Before the pandemic began, there were 608 family child care providers and day care centers open in the county, according to data presented in the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber’s 2021 Childcare Impact Panel. There currently are 396 centers and family providers that remain open, and the number of available spaces has decreased by 57%.

To view the map, visit childcaredeserts.org.