ECIC’s Child Care Innovation Fund is supporting subrecipient projects within the following innovation types:
- Early Care and Education Registered Apprenticeship programs are scaling up to support communities to sustain and grow models to address child care workforce challenges
- Family Child Care Networks enhance supports for home-based child care, including increasing business supports, quality, access to services, and sustainability.
- Regional Child Care Coalitions bring economic development, early childhood experts, and parent leaders together to accelerate community-level efforts to address Michigan’s child care crisis.
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Early Care and Education Registered Apprenticeships
In a continuing effort to develop a well-paid and highly skilled early care and education (ECE) workforce, expanding access to affordable child care for Michigan families, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) awarded the Early Childhood Investment Corporation’s Child Care Innovation Fund $2 million through its Labor Employment and Training Administration (ETA) Community Grant.
This grant supports previous apprenticeship design grantees to scale their newly registered Early Care and Education Registered Apprenticeship programs (ECE RAPs) further expanding this workforce innovation statewide.
View 2023-2024 ECE Registered Apprenticeship Awardees
Family Child Care Networks
The Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP) is leading a comprehensive, statewide effort to strengthen local child care systems. As a part of that effort, the Early Childhood Investment Corporation’s (ECIC) Child Care Innovation Fund successfully competed for federal Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) funds from MiLEAP to be their partner in the administration of Family Child Care Networks award opportunities.
A family child care network is an interconnected group of providers and families that comes together to enhance supports for home-based child care, including quality, access to services, and sustainability.
This funding opportunity supports subrecipients partnering with ECIC’s Child Care Innovation Fund to:
- Connect and support home-based child care programs in the delivery of essential services to improve program quality and strengthen home-based child care.
- Build the capacity of one or more family child care networks to support home-based child care providers through technical assistance, educational and engagement opportunities with decision-makers and policymakers, and connections to additional local and state resources.
- Improve the policy, economic, and regulatory environments for home-based child care in MI.
View 2023 Family Child Care Network grant recipients.
Regional Child Care Coalitions
The Early Childhood Investment Corporation’s (ECIC) Child Care Innovation Fund successfully competed for $1.85 million in federal Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) funds from MiLEAP to be their partner in the administration of Regional Child Care Coalitions over the next five years, with the option of up to five one-year grant extensions.
As MiLEAP’s partner, ECIC’s Child Care Innovation Fund will release an application for 10 Regional Child Care Coalitions in early January 2025. One Regional Child Care Coalition will be selected for each Economic Development Collaborative region.
Learn More about Regional Coalitions!
The Regional Child Care Coalitions and Family Child Care Networks projects are supported through a grant awarded by the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential using Child Care Development Funds (CCDF).
The Apprenticeship Scale Up III project is supported by funding provided by the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) as demonstration and research funding under Section 169(c) of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).
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