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Child Care Support Program

Access to safe and affordable child care that enables Basin residents to work and Basin businesses to retain employees is identified in the Columbia Basin Management Plan (2020-2022) as a desired outcome of the strategic priority, Support for Business Renewal.

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 821 new child care spaces
  • improve over 2,597 existing child care spaces
  • certify and train more than 131 Early Childhood Educators
  • support four Basin-wide professional development conferences for Early Childhood Educators
  • support 101 child care providers through its Child Care 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.

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:

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.

Applications are open. Click here to learn more.

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.

Basin Early Years Conference

From 2017-2021, the Trust supported the only Basin-based professional development conference for Early Childhood Educators. The Early Years Conference offered Early Childhood Educators access to local, high quality professional development and networking opportunities.

Early Years Community Tables

From 2017 – 2020, the Trust supported Early Years Community Tables throughout the Basin. These are community planning groups that coordinate and develop local resources to support young children’s healthy development

The Trust also offers support for Early Childhood Educators through its Training Fee Support Program.

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.