Child Care Support Program
The Trust’s Child Care Support Program helps maintain and create new child care spaces in the Basin and supports Early Childhood Educator recruitment and retention.
Since 2017, the Trust’s Child Care Support Program helped:
- create 1,443 new child care spaces
- provide $6.8 million in funding for 450 projects to improve 3,600 child care spaces
- certify and train more than 300 Early Childhood Educators
- enhance the wages of an annual average of 340 Early Childhood Educators since 2022
- support five Basin-wide professional development conferences for Early Childhood Educators.
Child Care Grants to Create New Spaces
If you have a project that will create new child care spaces, reach out to us to talk about it. We can support projects that have broad community support, a building location, an experienced operator, and possible funding from other sources. Support may include:
- help to prepare an application for another funder
- funding for building new or renovating existing
- funding to purchase child care equipment
- contact childcaresupport@ourtrust.org for details and to apply.
Early Childhood Educator Wage Subsidy Program
The Early Childhood Educator Wage Subsidy Program helps strengthen the Early Childhood Educator (ECE) workforce by providing a $2 per hour wage subsidy to enhance the wages of eligible ECEs employed by licensed child care facilities in the Columbia Basin Trust region.
Click here to learn more.
Early Childhood Educator Training Wage Program
The Early Childhood Educator Training Wage Program helps strengthen the Early Childhood Educator (ECE) workforce by providing a training wage grant to ECE Assistants (ECEAs) and certified ECEs, employed by licensed child care facilities in the Basin, to support them to complete and/or upgrade their ECE qualifications.
Applications are open. Click here to learn more.
Other Support for Early Childhood Educators
- Non-profit childcare providers can access a range of resources to grow the capacity of their organizations through the Trust’s Non-Profit Advisors Program. Learn more at ourtrust.org/npa.
- For-profit child care providers can access advice tailored to their business needs to support growth and efficiency through the Basin Business Advisors Program. Learn more at ourtrust.org/bba.
- Child Care Resource and Referral (CCRRs) programs can share information to help child care providers access available funding programs, open a licensed child care facility, connect with licensing officials, and access professional development opportunities. CCRRs exist in communities across the Basin, including:
- CCRR West Kootenay (based in Nelson, satellite locations in New Denver and Nakusp)
- Revelstoke CCRR Kootenay-Columbia CCRR (based in Trail)
- Southeast Kootenay CCRR (based in Cranbrook)
- Rocky Mountain CCRR (based in Golden)
- The Early Childhood Educators of BC (ECEBC), in partnership with the Province of British Columbia provides a broad range of professional development opportunities, training and resources including the ECE Education Support Fund. To learn more visit www.ecebc.ca