New Hampshire needs more childcare. New programs face hurdles in filling the void. 

Madison Fisher, a social worker and mom of four, decided she wanted to start a childcare program after she got custody of her young niece. With children ranging from infant to elementary age, she wanted somewhere everyone could be cared for in one place, instead of all over town. 

“I had two of my kiddos in an at-home center with a relative, and then I had my niece, who I got guardianship of and worked on adopting, in a center,” she said. “It was so hard just to figure out (and) piece together childcare.”

She drafted her plan during her lunch breaks at her former job, and eventually moved into a space in an office complex in Hampton she found with help from an old boss in January. After months of renovations, hiring and a couple of missed start dates due to roadblocks, The Willow Center opened in June. 

According to the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, there was a 14% decline in childcare programs in the Granite State from 2017 to 2025. 

Childcare availability issues have been a consistent concern for working families and politicians, but programs big and small are slowly popping up. In addition to Fisher’s program, a new Boys and Girls Club of Central and Northern New Hampshire program in Lisbon opened this year, and Easterseals has an early learning center under construction in a new housing development village in Londonderry.

These new programs are facing challenges parallel to those of existing programs: balancing business expenses with affordability, finding qualified staff, and gaining the support and trust of the community. 

Money, money, money

Every new business relies on capital to get started, and Fisher needed outside help as she is “not wealthy” and spent most of her career in social work and early learning. Through small-business aid organizations and business mentorship programs, she was able to get a $50,000 loan to start the program. 

“That’s all I could get. So I was determined to make that small amount work, which was a huge challenge in itself because nobody starts a business with that little amount of money,” she said. “I had to do a lot of learning because my background is not business.” 

The loan went toward rent, utilities and renovationg the program space to comply with state childcare licensing requirements, all before the program even opened for care.  

“There’s so many purchases we would love to do,” Fisher said. “I won’t be getting a paycheck for a long time.” 

Fisher said she wanted to make her program “accessible and helpful” to all families, and looked to state assistance programs to help make childcare more affordable for parents. Given Hampton’s position in the Maine-Massachusetts-New Hampshire seacoast triangle, she wanted to make sure she could take as much tuition assistance aid as possible. Her programs take New Hampshire and Maine childcare scholarships, as well as education freedom account dollars for her homeschool and summer programs. 

“The goal when I did research was, ‘What can we get?’ Like how can we make it more accessible because childcare is insanely expensive, and running a childcare business is so expensive,” Fisher said. 

In the few months since opening, Fisher is still figuring out how to balance her finances. To help with expenses and to keep costs for families down, Fisher also holds CPR and first-aid training classes in the center after hours. Her center has a dedicated multi-use space that she plans to rent to outside vendors in the future. 

Unlike Fisher, the Boys and Girls Club of Central and Northern New Hampshire and Easterseals relied on major fundraising efforts to get their new programs established. 

The North Country Clubhouse in Lisbon, run by the Boys and Girls Club, opened its new early childhood program in May. Around $2.5 million was needed to convert office space into classrooms in the program’s building in Lisbon, which only hosted an afterschool program. CEO Chris Emond said the money mostly came from private and community donors. 

The decision to open an early learning program in Lisbon, Emond said, came after he spoke with community members and realized there was a “serious need” for more early care in the North Country. The 16,000-square-foot building on North Main Street had the space, but would have to be repurposed. 

“We would never fill (the building) with school-age kids,” Emond said. “There just literally aren’t enough of them. So the thought kind of came up that maybe we can build an early childcare center there.” 

The renovations added 36 infant, toddler and preschool slots to the building; 20 have been filled as of September. In addition to construction funding, Emond said he wanted to raise enough money upfront when the program slowly “ramps up” care.

Easterseals’ new program, Technology Hill Early Learning Center, is being constructed along with a new apartment complex, The Village on Technology Hill, in Londonderry. Located near the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, the complex has been advertised as a “work-life balance” community created with young families and working professionals in mind. Along with Easterseals’ on-site childcare, it will have a dog park, convenience store, children’s playground and fitness areas. 

Kristen McGuigan, chief programs officer of Easterseals, said the partnership with the developers came in part because of Easterseals’ reputation. The developers wanted to have childcare on-site available to families leasing apartments in the complex, and McGuigan said opening up a program there seemed like “a really natural fit” for the organization. 

“It’s so cool. It really shows when you can have funders, developers, community members, nonprofits come together, really cool things can happen,” she said. “When I think about young families and being able to get up in the morning, drop your kid off, grab a coffee and potentially go to work on that property, I think it’s so smart to be able to decrease stress factors for families.” 

The center is being designed from scratch to be licensed for more than 200 children. McGuigan said the organization was able to fund the project through donations and has a large team working to make sure everything runs smoothly so that the program can open in January. 

McGuigan also said the new program in Londonderry will help Easterseals balance finances for its two other programs in Manchester, which focus on early childhood supports and services. By serving families at all income levels, it will “continue to strengthen and utilize sustainability” for all of their programs. 

“Our program is designed to screen and assess children of all abilities coming in, and if they need higher levels of care, additional services, our model will allow us to make sure we’re meeting those kids’ needs, depending on the location of services needed as well,” she said. 

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Finding qualified staff

As the number of childcare programs in New Hampshire has declined, so has the number of qualified early childhood professionals working in the field. 

According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, the state’s childcare workforce declined by 6%, representing a loss of about 330 educators and staff between 2023 and 2025. Analysis shows that professionals are leaving the field primarily due to low wages and lack of benefits such as healthcare and retirement (usually because many businesses cannot afford to offer them). 

When it came time to hire new staff, Fisher said she looked for teachers who would care for their students like their own and were qualified to do so. She used hiring websites like Indeed and, as of September, conducted more than 60 interviews. 

Her biggest issue was that not everyone who applied was qualified. Under state childcare licensing laws, early education teachers must have a certain level of postsecondary education and work hours to be left alone with children. 

“I got a lot of applicants who didn’t have childcare experience and kind of thought they had things that were similar, like being an LNA or things like that. It was a lot like going through interviews that maybe weren’t qualified to be lead associate teacher.”

Fisher was able to find staff that was not only qualified but “patient” with her through the uncertainty of her program’s opening date, which was pushed from March to June due to issues with the building’s fire alarm system. She is working with an apprenticeship program to find qualified staff, and has one teacher in a program right now. 

“Childcare is a field a lot of people end up in because they don’t have another choice, not necessarily because they want to be here, so finding the teachers who want to be here is a big challenge.”

Large organizations like The Boys and Girls Club and Easterseals have the funding to provide benefits such as healthcare, retirement and career movement opportunities, making them appealing to prospective employees. However, they are still facing recruitment challenges, just like the rest of the industry. 

Emond said that while staffing is a challenge for the program, it is less of a challenge for him now because this is not the first time the Boys and Girls Club has started a new early learning center in the region. He said he’s learned important lessons from past startups, including that hiring good teachers takes time. 

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is it could take nine months to a year to get fully staffed and fully enrolled, because you’ve got to take your time in finding the right staff,” he said. “Once you’re open, then the parents are counting on you. If you hired the wrong team, it’s this constant battle of culture and people calling out on Monday and people quitting, and you’re constantly trying to plug holes. You don’t want to be in that situation.” 

Katlyn Giragos, center director for the program in Lisbon, said she was getting “less applicants than expected.” She suspects it’s partially because the early learning program at Plymouth State closed. 

Giragos said a decent number of teachers came from the local Head Start program, which is for children 3 to 5 years old, because they want to work with infants and toddlers. 

Growing their community roots

Families may need childcare, but it does not mean they will immediately trust a program with their child. New programs try to establish themselves within the communities they serve to increase their enrollment and meet their goals. 

The Boys and Girls Club knew that because the program was new, it would have to build a reputation in the community. Before construction in Lisbon finished, Giragos gave families tours of the facility and introduced them to staff members so they could get a feel for the center. 

“I really got to know each family that came in,” Giragos said. She also helped organize open houses and events to engage with the community, and said they had a “huge turnout.” 

“It’s a scary thing to hand off your kid,” Giragos said. 

Her goal is to continue to build trust within the community so the program becomes better known for its early care offerings, not just its afterschool program. 

Because its center is still under construction, Easterseals has been working with the apartment complex’s leasing office and local companies to introduce the center to residents and employees. Discounts are being offered to prospective families, and McGuigan said the organization has created a lot of partnerships around “communication and collaboration” to ensure people in the community get first access to the center. 

They also plan to have longer operating hours in an attempt to accommodate more working families. Most childcare programs in New Hampshire close between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., which can make pickup difficult for families who work outside traditional working hours or commute. 

“The extended time will look a little bit different, but we’re hoping it will be really supportive for families,” McGuigan said. “It makes staffing more difficult though.”

In the early days of her program, Fisher said she’s trying to be flexible as the needs of her families, teachers and community at large fluctuate. Already, she is opening another toddler classroom, as she is “constantly getting interest” for toddler care, which is sparse in the Seacoast. She has also opened up parts of the space to homeschooling programs as a way to generate conversation and get more parents in the space. 

Additionally, Fisher wants her center to be more than “just childcare” and has connected families with early support and service resources, as well as bringing some of those supports on-site. As a parent and former social worker, Fisher said she knows how hard it is for parents to manage childcare and other services. 

“Our society is not built for working families, so for mom and dad or grandma to come pick up at 5 o’clock and then have to go to speech or OT afterwards. … We’re trying to incorporate as much as possible into that child’s day here for them,” she said.