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.
From 2017-2020, the Trust’s Child Care Support Program helped:
- create 658 new child care spaces
- improve over 2,000 existing child care spaces
- certify and train more than 115 Early Childhood Educators
- support three Basin-wide professional development conferences for Early Childhood Educators
- support 101 child care providers through its Child Care Advisor
