E.2. My Daycare Children Always Come First

In this episode, host Kate MacCrimmon explores all the things in family child care in Wisconsin with Silke O’Donnell, owner of Sunshine Family Day Care and AFSCME Union Board Member. Silke talks about her career as a provider and her desire to create a sanctuary for all the children in her care. She shares her personal sacrifices she has made during COVID including living separately from her family, and her work with AFSCME Union as a child care advocate and how close providers came to getting health insurance and retirement before Act 10. 

This Family Child Care series is produced by Kids Forward with the support of the Partnership of America's Children, Alliance for Early Success, and the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through the Mellon Public Humanities Graduate Fellowship Program. These podcasts are dedicated to highlighting the stories of everyday people in our communities on policy topics that affect us all. For this series, we focus on family child care providers, nearly half of the early care and education workforce.