This article was originally published on August 6, 2025 by Source Media Properties as part of the series, 'It Takes a Village: Why Child Care is Everyone's Business.' Read the full series here.
Cassandra Dailey was paying more than $500 a month to send her toddler to child care.
Then, the youngster got kicked out.
Her son, Adonis, was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder when he was 2 years old. The employees at his child care center simply couldn’t handle his behavioral challenges.
After that, Dailey lost her full-time job because she needed to leave early to care for Adonis.
“I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but I am a realist,” she said. “If you have a child who is severely disabled in some way, it does affect your ability to work.”
Now 6 years old, Adonis still doesn’t speak much. He has trouble putting his thoughts into words and sometimes displays aggressive behavior.
But he’s also incredibly bright and particularly fascinated with the solar system.
“He knows facts about the planets that I can’t tell you,” Dailey said. “He amazes me every single day.”
Dailey’s story is an all-too-familiar one for parents of special needs children. Finding quality, affordable care for any child is hard enough. It’s often more difficult when a family lives in a rural area. When special needs are added to the search, workable solutions become even more elusive.
Few centers offer the unique physical, mental and emotional supports children like Adonis need.
Various agencies designed to serve as clearinghouses can offer referrals, but parents said they are often left to navigate the details on their own.
‘You have to figure it out on your own’
Skyler Curtin’s 7-year-old autistic son Lucas tends to run away when he gets upset.
Curtin said this behavior is straining the staff’s capacities at his child care center, even though she’s offered to help them learn more about what works for him. She’s looking for another provider that might be better able to handle his challenges.
So far, she’s been unsuccessful.
Child care centers in Ohio must maintain a minimum ratio of adults to every child, which fluctuates depending on the age of children in care.
"Unfortunately, in this town and in a lot of towns, honestly, even the larger cities, child care just is not set up for those extreme needs, for those extreme behaviors."Cassandra Dailey
But parents and providers said special needs children typically require more adults on hand and specialized attention. These providers often need additional training and certification.
Meanwhile, funding daily operations is a real challenge for many child care centers. Providers struggle to retain the staff they have, let alone source and support specially trained caregivers.
Developmental disability boards exist in every Ohio county to support the parents of special needs children in their search for resources.
However, developmental disability boards don’t provide child care. Instead, they function as coordinators, pointing parents to what’s already available in the community.
When it comes to child care for special needs kids, parents said there often isn’t much available.
“I can’t really find available (child care) spaces that have people that are properly trained,” Curtin said.
She said she appreciates the work of developmental disability boards, but wishes the help went further.
“When (your child) gets diagnosed, they give you a bunch of paperwork,” she said. “They tell you to go on your own, and you have to figure it out on your own.”
One local family with a special needs child finally found the answer it needed, but it took months of fruitless searches and dead ends.
‘I probably called 16 to 20 daycares’
Michael and Brooke Magyar moved to Richland County several years ago to take jobs as physical therapists at a local hospital. Their first daughter, Nora, arrived in 2021. A few months before their second daughter, Isla, was born in 2023, they learned she carried a rare genetic marker for a disease called Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.
Children born with this condition have intellectual disabilities, developmental delays, breathing problems and recurrent seizures. They are usually unable to speak, although some may learn a few words.
Isla will require continuous medical care throughout her life.
The Magyars were a two-income family before she was born, but after Brooke’s maternity leave ended, they couldn’t find the kind of specialized care that Isla needed, including help with her feeding tube.
So Michael decided to quit his job to become Isla’s primary caretaker for nearly a year, even though they both needed to work to cover Isla’s growing medical expenses. They continued to search for help, following up on dozens of leads that went nowhere.
“Initially, this started when I reached out to the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association), and they gave me a list of what was supposed to be child care resources in the area that were certified for special needs,” he said.
“I probably called 16 to 20 different daycares, everywhere within a half hour drive of our house,” Michael added. “I left a voicemail and sometimes I didn’t get a return call.
“I didn’t even mention initially that I had a kid with special needs.”
What happened when an informal ‘task force’ mobilized around one family
Months passed before they got a tip from the Richland County Board of Developmental Disabilities to connect with Jeanetta Elia, director of the M1 Kids Academy in Mansfield.
Like many other providers, Elia wanted to help the Magyars, but she wasn’t sure that would be possible, given the scope of Isla’s needs.
“There are times where we’ve had to turn kids away because we did not have the resources to handle those situations, and they need more than what we’re able to provide,” Elia said.
“We can’t handle some of those really extreme behaviors, unfortunately. I hate to have to turn any kid away, because every kid needs care. Every kid needs love and attention.”
When Michael met with Elia, he figured it was just going to be another routine discussion. Instead, he walked into a makeshift task force.
Representatives from Richland County New Hope, Help Me Grow, the Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence (OCALI), Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation, the Richland County YWCA and the M1 Kids Academy all joined forces to help the Magyars.
At a full conference room table, the group came up with a plan to support Isla, the Magyars and the staff who would be caring for her. They talked about how to handle her limited mobility and provide accommodations that would allow her to interact with her peers.
“A lot of places were worried about doing feeding tubes and things like that, but I had some experience with feeding tubes already, so I wasn’t scared,” Elia said. “We were willing to give it a try.”
Parents say finding the right resources can feel like navigating a speakeasy
Isla attended the M1 Kids Academy for several months while the Magyars focused on getting a Medicaid waiver for at-home care. It was a solution that worked for them.
But what the Magyars experienced — an informal task force coming together to make it work — is far from the norm.
“I don’t know other centers in Richland County that are doing this,” Elia said. “It’s just something with my social work background that I’ve started doing in hopes that maybe it will help other centers, other families, to be able to have that opportunity to serve other kids.”
Even though they eventually found a solution, Brooke said the family’s months-long search shows the system of support services and child care for special needs kids is broken.
“Everything feels like a speakeasy. You have to hear about everything through word of mouth and try to figure it out on your own,” she said. “There’s no one place to go to say, ‘Hey, I need help, I’m a parent of a special-needs child.’
“You shouldn’t have to dive down all these rabbit holes and chase these people down to get answers.”
Michael said his biggest advice to other parents is not to give up.
“Don’t be afraid to ask questions,” he said. “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
“Don’t be afraid when you’re told, ‘Oh, sorry, we can’t help you with that.’ That’s not an answer, you know?”
‘I will go to the end of this earth for my child’
Dailey considers herself lucky because she has some family support. Her fiancé and her father regularly assist with care for Adonis.
Now that Adonis is in school full time, Dailey is pursuing her career again.
“I decided to finally go back to school. I put it off for so many years because I haven’t had child care for my son,” she said.
She’s currently pursuing a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), a research-based therapy she said has positively impacted Adonis.
It’s a path she’s embraced wholeheartedly despite the many hardships.
“I will go to the end of this earth for my child,” she said. “If that means constantly filling out paperwork, if that means putting my dreams on hold and not being able to start my career until a little bit later, then that is my journey in this life.”
“I would not trade him for the world or anything in it,” she added. “He’s taught me so much.”
Read more about how families in north central Ohio are navigating child care challenges at richlandsource.com, ashlandsource.com or knoxpages.com.