National Child Care Provider Appreciation Day was Friday, May 6. Lane Community College has two child care centers: one on the main campus and one downtown. Both of these facilities are rated five stars by the Oregon Quality Rating and Improvement System. Beyond daily child care, LCC also provides child care provider training and grant allocation through Quality Care Connections.
The cost for child care per term through LCC is $2,695 for full time and $1,969 for half days. Scholarships, subsidies and sliding scales are available. Staff at Lane Child and Family Center are available to help parents with finances. Child care services are available for students and general community members and they care for children 30 months to 5 years old.
The ratio within the LCC child care facilities is one teacher per five children. Additional adults in the room include early childhood education students finishing their practicum hours for their degree.
April Kay Williams is the grant specialist with the Stabilization Grant Team. Quality Care Connections was put in charge of reallocating the Stabilization Grant, a $39 billion portion of the American Rescue Plan earmarked for child care centers. So far, $14 million has been allocated to 329 providers in Lane County. Each child care center received between $6,000-$233,000. For example, the YMCA received 14 different grants for all of their child care centers.
Williams’ job was to reach out to child care providers and make sure that they understood how to apply for the grant. Williams said that a lot of child care providers are folks in their 70s and they struggled with the online forms. QCC hosted workshops to teach people how to apply, and kept up with outreach to make sure that people got the money they deserved.
Besides allocating millions of dollars, QCC is an on-campus resource for child care training. Most of the classes are available to anyone, not just certified child care providers or students. QCC offers many free and affordable classes including CPR and First Aid training, critical competencies for infant caregivers, and nutrition training for child care providers. These trainings are available in English and Spanish.
QCC can also help parents find specific child care providers through their website or calling 211. The resources that QCC offers at Lane Community College are vast and child-development-focused.
