Child Care Partnership Grants

Access to child care is one of the foundational elements of a thriving community. It supports children and families, strengthens the workforce and helps local economies grow. Yet, many communities across Washington continue to face significant gaps in child care access. Turning an identified need into a viable and sustainable solution takes time, planning and local capacity and resources.

The Child Care Partnership Grant (CCPG) fills that gap by providing small planning grants to help communities understand their local child care needs, build partnerships, explore solutions and prepare projects for future investment and implementation. By investing in this early planning work, CCPG helps communities build the readiness needed to move locally driven child care solutions forward.

Since 2020, CCPG has supported:

• 70 unique CCPG projects in 34 counties, which has resulted in over 1,320+ new licensed child care slots.
• 3,400 additional childcare slots in the planning stage
• $49M+ million state, federal, and private funding secured by CCPG grantees
• 11+ languages presented in outreach and technical assistance efforts, such as:
  • Somali, Amharic, Dari, Spanish, Mixteco (Mixteco Bajo and Mixteco Alto), French, Russian, Punjabi, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and Arabic.

Ways Child Care Partnership Grants invest, serve and build communities

Readiness is the foundation for expanding child care access, but it doesn’t look the same in every community. Some communities need time to build partnerships and a shared vision. Others need support with business planning, operations, or preparing a project for future investment. CCPG meets communities where they are, helping build local capacity and readiness needed to move child care solutions forward.

These stories demonstrate what each stage of readiness can look like:

Building Community Readiness

The entire Republic Community: spent years of local planning and partnership that positioned the community to turn a child care vision into a project ready for investment. Read Republic’s story here.

Strengthening Planning Readiness

Kwanza Preparatory Academy developed the strategic planning needed to advance their center and leverage $1 million in additional investment. Explore more of their process here.

Supporting Operational Readiness

Pomeroy Community Connection used CCPG funding to tackle a critical question before capital investment: how do you build a child care program that can successfully operate in a rural community for years to come. See how they did that here.

Building Readiness Through Collaboration

The Lind-Ritzville community brought community partners together to examine local child care needs, explore solutions and build alignment around a community plan, which resulted in over $1 million in facilities funding. Explore how here.

Resources