Child Care & Early Learning
Child care and early learning play critical roles in ensuring parents can work, children can learn, and the economy can thrive. However, not all communities have access to high-quality, affordable child care. In Arizona, an estimated 1 in 4 communities need more child care facilities to support local families, and that need is even greater in rural areas and communities of color. At LISC Phoenix, we provide the tools to help child care providers open, expand, and maintain their child care facilities so that more families can access high-quality child care.
Arizona Child Care Infrastructure Grant
Through the Arizona Child Care Infrastructure Grant program, we partnered with the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Division of Child Care and First Things First to provide nearly $60 million to child care providers across the state. These grantees made much needed improvements to increase the quality, capacity, and safety of their spaces, ensuring Arizona’s children receive quality early education and more families have access to child care.
Child Care Guides and Resources
We've developed a series of self-assessments, facility guides, and business resources specifically for child care providers.
Home-Based Child Care Educator Housing Stability Project
We're exploring short- and long-term strategies for Home-Based Child Care Educators to achieve housing stability. The research we engage in and the community-input we receive will become a blueprint for fostering the local conditions necessary to build power and housing stability among Home-Based Child Care Educators – both in Arizona, and in communities nationwide.
Making Space Matter
Space matters! Quality space supports children’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development – not only keeping them safe, but giving them the room to discover and relate to the world, which is critical for healthy growth.
We’ve gathered resources on facility development and related strategies to develop a resource report and create a new toolkit that local champions across the nation can use to actively plan for an interconnected system of supports needed to finally get kids – and teachers – into the spaces they deserve.
Building Innovation for Equitable Child Care
The Building Innovation for Equitable Child Care (BIEC) program funds, coordinates, and supports a cohort of “co-location models” that seek to push the boundaries of ways that child care space has historically been thought of and developed. The current BIEC cohort comprises 19 partners from 15 LISC local offices across the country, with diverse communities, leadership, and development projects. These projects seek to pair child care provision with affordable housing, community space, health services, and other critical community needs.
Child Care Updates
Subscribe to our email list to learn more about grant opportunities and resources for child care and early learning providers.
Contact Our Child Care Team
For questions about our child care initiatives, email azchildcare@lisc.org or leave a message on our help line: (602) 252-6315. A member of our child care team will get back to you as soon as possible.
