Update on the Arizona Child Care Infrastructure Grant

In December LISC Phoenix announced the launch of the Arizona Child Care Infrastructure grant, a program that we had been building for many months with the Arizona Department of Economic Security. The response was greater and faster than we could have hoped for. Thanks to support of our outreach partners and the trust of child care providers across the state, we received a large volume of applications in the first week, which led us to announced that the application period would close on December 21, 2022.

In the two weeks the application was open we received 969 applications totaling over $176 million in request for $26 million in available grant funds.

Our child care team has spent the past month reviewing applications to prioritize funding to those that will increase capacity and quality of existing child care providers, focusing on child care providers who can serve DES-eligible families in traditional child care deserts, including geographic areas where child care is extremely limited or there is no availability of child care. Our first round of finalists are being notified this week to take the next steps in the grant contract process.

In the meantime we wanted to share some early learnings from applications we received.

The outreach and design of the application and the process were intentionally designed to reduce participant burden and increase accessibility. The online application was available in English and Spanish with bilingual support staff available to answer questions and assist completing applications by online office hours, phone and email.

Applications were received from 14 of Arizona’s 15 counties representing 71 cities and towns and with geographic distribution aligned with populations. Greenlee county was the only county that did not submit an application.

37% of applications were from providers serving low- or moderate-income communities.

Family child care providers (child care group homes and certified family homes) are ~17% of the providers in Arizona but were 21% of the applications received.

90% of applicants chose two or more project areas. The most popular requests were for building improvement and outdoor learning environments.

The early care and education sector has relied for so long on child care money with extensive constraints on how to use the funds and the time limitations that a narrative heard with these federal funds was the sector would not know what to do with this much funding. However, even with extremely compressed timelines, the response to the infrastructure grant application demonstrated that when well-planned with partners and responsive leadership, the funding can be efficiently and effectively allocated.

The response to the grant furthers a new narrative that there is still a great need for additional funding dedicated to building the capacity of early care and education providers through infrastructure and facility investment coupled with funding for training and technical assistance.

While we work to service these grant dollars, we're also seeking new partners to serve the unmet demand and longer-term needs in the child care sector. If you'd like to partner with us, contact tbenelli@lisc.org to discuss.