Childcare in the northern Central Valley is getting a funding bump, thanks to a new grant partnership between the Merced and Stanislaus county offices of education.
The Bright Beginnings Grant is a regional initiative led by the two county offices designed to provide startup funds and supporting resources to child care providers who work out of their homes. The grant is funded by the Catalyst Grant through North Valley Thrive.
The program aims to increase the amount of childcare providers in the region, which has been facing a childcare shortage across the region and state in recent years due to the pandemic and federal funding shifts.
At-home daycare facilities are licensed family child care in private homes. The business can be out of a home that’s rented or owned by the provider. This type of childcare fosters a family-like environment for infants and children and typically offers non-traditional hours for families in need of services outside the regular business day.
There were 80 grant opportunities available for Bright Beginnings across Merced and Stanislaus counties. Recipients receive guidance and support from the county offices at every step – starting with a $2,500 start-up funding to cover licensing fees, safety equipment and educational materials.
The grant also offers a hands-on UC Merced course on business management and financial literacy, with additional ongoing mentorship in English and Spanish.
While slots filled quickly for the Bright Beginnings grant program, Merced County Office of Education is continuing to offer another opportunity through their Child Care Initiative Project. The initiative is similar to Bright Beginnings, without the start-up funding grant.
The effort to boost childcare in the Valley is highly necessary as limited childcare options are leading parents with “nowhere to take their kids,” MCOE early education director Lorena Burrola said.
“When you have a waiting list of 800 families, but no place for them to go to childcare…we were stuck in between a rock and a hard spot,” said Burrola.
Building back childcare after recession, pandemic
Before the Great Recession in 2008, Merced County had more than 400 family child care providers. That number dwindled by half due to providers losing their homes, Burrola said.
More than 15 years later, the community is still working on recuperating those lost facilities.
“We’ve needed all this time to build that pool of family child care providers, all those child care slots for our families,” Burrola said.
The COVID-19 pandemic also made a lasting impact on childcare services across the country.
According to The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost during the first eight months of the pandemic. Childcare employment has been slowly recovering since 2020, now back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels according to the center.
Merced County was one of the few counties to grow in population following the pandemic in 2021. The pandemic also led to a shift in how the community viewed childcare as a vital service, Burrola said.
“One of the silver linings of COVID, was the realization that childcare is huge for infrastructure,” Burrola said. “The whole world got shut down, and all the essential workers who needed to go to work still needed childcare.”
There is also a need for more childcare facilities that provide services in Spanish and English. Many of the people who have received grants are bilingual and care for children with diverse backgrounds. Burrola said the county office encourages providers to utilize different techniques and strategies to implement language learning in their daycares.
“They learn how to (take advantage of) bilingualism and how to really help (bilingual) children flourish, even though English isn’t their first language,” Burrola said. “Because they know that once they go into the school system, they will be exposed to the English language more frequently.”
MCOE is no longer accepting applicants for the Bright Beginnings grant program, but is currently accepting applications on a rolling basis for the Child Care Initiative Project. Visit the Merced Office of Education website for more information.