Child Care Support Program
Since 2017, the Trust’s Child Care Support Program has helped maintain and create new child care spaces in the Basin, train more Early Childhood Educators, and provide advisory services to child care providers.
To date, the Trust’s Child Care Support Program helped:
- create 1,443 new child care spaces
- improve over 12,000 child care spaces through 450 projects receiving $6.8 million
- 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 Support Advisor
As part of the Child Care Support Program, Columbia Basin Trust has partnered with Kootenay Kids Society to provide advisory services to registered child care providers in the Basin. These advisory services will support, enhance and increase quality licensed child care spaces.
To learn more about these services and connect with the Child Care Advisor, click here.
Child Care Capital Grants: New Spaces
The Child Care Capital Grants program focuses on strengthening the quality of child care in the Basin.
If you are looking to create new child care spaces, we invite you to contact us to discuss your project. We support projects that have broad community support, a building location, an experienced operator, and possible funding from other sources. Support may include:
- Proposal development support
- Capital grant funding
- Contact childcaresupport@ourtrust.org for details.
Child Care Grants: New Equipment and Small Improvements
The Trust’s Child Care Grants focus on strengthening the quality of child care in the Basin.
This program has two funding streams, New Equipment and Small Improvements. Each funding stream has unique eligibility and project requirements. If you are a non-profit or a for-profit provider of licensed child care, carefully review each stream below, you may be eligible to submit one application per child care facility, per funding stream.
This program is currently closed, but more details can be found here.
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.
This program is open. 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 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
To learn about other supports available for Early Childhood Educators, visit www.ecebc.ca. The Early Childhood Educators of BC (ECEBC), in partnership with the Province of British Columbia, delivers the ECE Education Support Fund.
