Building Stronger Centers | Family Child Care Training

The FUND believes strongly that lack of technical expertise is often just as important an obstacle for child care providers that want to do a facilities project as lack of funding. Most child care providers are ill-equipped to undertake a facilities project, and require assistance, often intensive, in navigating the facilities development process. Providers' expertise is child care, not real estate development, and they are typically unfamiliar with the basics of how to identify and assess a site, pull together a development team, draft capital and operating budgets, raise the necessary funds, and manage construction. Because intensive technical assistance is expensive, most providers cannot access it, and many projects founder as a result.

The FUND has always provided technical assistance to its borrowers and grantees; but in recent years, we have also developed our own capacity to offer more comprehensive trainings to groups of providers. We currently offer two different training programs--an intensive, year-long training and support program for center-based providers planning facilities projects called Building Stronger Centers, and a one-day training through family child care networks, for family child care providers that want to improve their home-based child care environment.

Building Stronger Centers

Building Stronger Centers (BSC) is an intensive training and leadership development program which, combined with access to development capital, is designed to build the capacity of center-based early care and education programs to plan and implement facility improvement or expansion projects. The program begins with a week-long, residential training institute in the areas of facilities project development, organizational management, and leadership development, followed up with a year of individualized technical support and access to both seed money and project financing. The fundamental program goal is to help participants to complete their projects and thereby to grow the state's supply of high-quality child care space. The next Building Stronger Centers training will be in the Spring of 2010.

Setting the Stage for Quality: How to Improve Your Family Child Care Environment

The Fund periodically offers a "train-the-trainer" program to family child care systems, associations, CCR&R agency personnel and others. The training program is designed to prepare trainers to work directly with family child care providers to improve their home-based child care environment. Upon completion of the Fund's one-day training, trainers have access to all the materials, activities, and power point presentations to use in training the providers with whom they work. The materials are available in English, Spanish, and Chinese.

In addition, the Fund offers small equipment grants to Boston family child care organizations that 1) have completed the training described above, and 2) have trained the providers in their system. Eligible organizations will be contacted with an RFP for the small grants program in the fall, 2008.