Faith-Based Programs Help Fill The State's Childcare Access Void. They Have Their Own Challenges.

By Maya Mitchell Maya, New Hampshire Bulletin

For 37 years, Emmanuel Child Care Center operated out of Emmanuel Church in Rochester, providing infant, toddler, and preschool care to families on the Seacoast. On Aug. 28, the center closed its doors.

According to Pastor John Tate, the childcare program was no longer the best use of the space to meet the community’s needs. Instead, it is going to be home to a growing community food pantry.

“We had a wonderful center that operated excellently for a very long time, and we made the difficult but lighthearted decision to move on to a different use of the space,” Tate said.

For years, buildings of worship have been reliable places for families to find childcare. By providing faith-based teachings, access, or community, these programs with a limited presence in New Hampshire are giving families options for a different kind of care.

Kids by the Common, located in the Londonderry Presbyterian Church, was a “mission of the church” created to help bring more families to the church and serve the community. For more than 50 years, Kids by the Common has offered full-day kindergarten, something public schools in Londonderry did not offer until this year, as well as preschool and infant and toddler care.

“We’re hoping to be able to help grow the church as well, get families involved and hope that they want to set roots in the Presbyterian Church,” said center director Beth Connolly. “It’s very welcoming to all family makeups, all family structures. So we have to make it a welcoming environment and have everyone feel like they can be who they are when they’re here”

Connolly said that while the program is connected to the church and does offer care guided by religion, their goal is to teach children “to be kind.”

“Our philosophy is based on teaching children to be good humans, to be kind to our earth, be kind to our property, and be kind to each other,” Connolly said. “So we kind of incorporate the church’s belief through that. It’s not necessarily through daily prayers or anything like that. During Christmas time, we talk about the birth of Jesus and take kind of an overview of it and put it at a children’s level, something that they can understand. … That’s kind of the gist of our religious teachings.”

Gina Walsh, who operates Little Blessings in Northwood, rents space from St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Her program is not directly connected to St. Joseph’s or Catholicism. Walsh said she teaches nondenominational Christianity through her infant, toddler, and preschool out-of-school-time programming, and homeschool enrichment.

“We include a religious piece to our curriculum,” Walsh said. “We have themes every month, and part of our themes has a faith-based piece. … We also say a prayer before we eat. We usually do Bible verses.”

Both programs are state licensed, receive state childcare assistance funds, and adhere to state early-learning standards. Walsh believes she has a quality program, but enrollment growth has been slow, she said, because of the religious aspect of it.

“I’ve heard people calling us a Catholic program, and they don’t know if because we’re in a Catholic building, people perceive us that way and don’t understand that we’re open to all faiths or no faiths,” she said. “It’s not a requirement to be Catholic to come here, or to be a practicing Christian. I think there might be some misconceptions about families that are welcome here, or other faith-based programs for that matter.”

Kids by the Common, however, has grown exponentially recently. In 2024, it expanded the program from two classrooms to six to care for more kids and offer more full-day programming with help from the Presbyterian Church. Enrollment expanded from 27 to 62 children in a year and a half.

Connolly said her program’s increasing enrollment is due to several factors. She said she’s noticed a lot more families moving to Londonderry over the past few years because of its booming housing market, good public schools, and location near the employment hubs of Manchester, Concord, and Boston. She said the church’s and program’s inclusivity, small size, and family-oriented community are driving factors.

“There’s lots of families who are moving into town. So they’re looking at, ‘If I can’t purchase a house, can we rent a townhouse? Get into town and the school system?’” Connolly said. “The young kids start here with us.”

Depending on a program’s relationship with the church, it can be subject to the church’s issues. Childcare programs are interconnected with what happens there, making things potentially unpredictable.

Emmanuel Child Care closed because the church decided to repurpose the space. With five months’ notice and help from the state’s resource and referral agency, Child Care Aware of N.H., families and staff were given new placements and jobs.

Tate said the program had been a blessing to the church, and he is happy to have it end on decent terms. He also said that while the decision was not financial, the program was a challenging endeavor for the church.

“We didn’t operate it as a business, so it wasn’t really profitable,” Tate said. “But it wasn’t something that the church always had to subsidize either. There were years the church would subsidize the center, and there were years the center was in the black.”

This year, St. Joseph’s decided to open a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school in the same building as Little Blessings. Enrollment for Walsh has gone down this year due to the overlap, although she said she hopes to figure it out with the school and the parish.

“That was a pretty hard hit for us that we weren’t really expecting,” she said.

At the moment, Kids by the Common is the primary user of Londonderry Presbyterian. The church does not currently have a pastor, and the congregation’s numbers are low. As a nonprofit, the childcare program makes a weekly donation to the church to help cover utility bills and other expenses.

Childcare programs, regardless of whether they are nonprofit or church-affiliated, operate on thin financial margins due to high operating costs. Connolly contributes financially to the church while also trying to maintain affordability for families.

“We do some fundraisers throughout the year to kind of help balance out the budget,” she said. “We’re very careful with what we purchase. We do a lot of Facebook Marketplaces, but we try to be mindful and you know just try to keep things as low cost as we can while still enhancing the program.”

The closing of Emmanuel Child Care Center was emotional, Tate said. But he has hope for the future. In the final weeks of operation, leaders met with someone who is looking to start a childcare program in their church.

“We know it leaves a hole,” Tate said. “But we are praying that God will raise up another center that will carry that on and pass the baton to somebody else.”

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