Ep5. Providers are trusted members of the community.

In this episode, Kate MacCrimon talks with Nicki Cooper, owner of Nicki’s Playpen, serving families in Madison WI. Nicki has been operating her FCC program since 1994. Nicki talks about her ways of maintaining a multigenerational relationship with families in her care as a critical part of her professionalism. She also shares her experience with the regulatory systems that have been disappointing and unsupportive, and how the Union she was involved in its formative years has made things different. 

This podcast series is produced by Kids Forward with the support of the Partnership of America's Children 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.