|
Child care is an essential support for working families and a valuable community
resource of which New Hampshire has a profound shortage.
There are
an estimated 106,485 children in need of care, and only
about 46,571 licensed spaces available — less than
half of the current need. The child care industry also
experiences 30-50% turnover among workers who are typically
paid poorly, receive few benefits, and too often leave
the field for financial reasons.
Child care programs
must balance competing economic forces, and the resulting
barriers can make it difficult for them
to expand to meet the need of their communities. One significant
barrier is the lack of access to traditional loans for facility expansion needs. The Loan Fund
has stepped in to meet that need for early care
and education programs where financing is appropriate.
Read "Early Education's Big Dividends: The Better Public Investment" in the Spring 2008 issue of Communities & Banking magazine.
The Loan Fund has loaned more than $4 million
to nonprofit child care centers and home-based family
child care providers in the last seven years. This support
has created or preserved over 2,700 child care spaces.
The purpose of the Child Care Facilities Program is to
retain existing child care spaces and develop new ones in
New Hampshire communities. This is done by lending funds
and providing training and technical support to nonprofit
child care centers and family-based child care providers. The Loan Fund provides child care centers with education and loans for purchase, renovations, and safety, licensing or other improvements.
If you have any questions, contact Julie McConnell, Director, Child Care Program, at (603) 224-6669, ext. 215 or jmcconnell@theloanfund.org.
| “Early Childhood development
programs are rarely portrayed as economic development
initiatives, and we think that is a mistake. ...They
should be at the top. Studies find that well-focused
investments in early childhood development yield high
public as well as private returns.” — "Early
Childhood Development: Economic Development with a
High Public Return," Art
Rolnick and Rob Grunewald, fedgazzette, March 2003. |
|
