Greater Mohawk Valley Childcare Grant Program

Workforce Development Board, Herkimer, Madison, Oneida Counties, Inc.

This program aims to implement systems change in workforce development efforts for residents located in the Greater Mohawk Valley region of New York State who are utilizing childcare as well as those that work within the Child Care Sector.

Eligible individuals include residents of Oneida, Herkimer, Madison, Otsego, Chenango, Delaware, Fulton, and Montgomery Counties who are marginalized populations in rural areas, such as unemployed, underemployed, low income, Black, Hispanic, or New American. This grant also serves childcare workers who are single mothers.

This is an 18-month project that will develop a job quality strategy for the regional childcare workforce focusing on pay, benefits, skill attainment, and regulations. With a focus on gathering data and feedback from those directly working in the childcare sector, this project has a strong worker voice component to ensure that both urban and rural childcare workers are involved in developing solutions and improvements regarding their employment while pulling from their experiences.

If you have an interest in being included in these various panels, please complete the General Interest Intake found in Resources.

Goals for this project include:

1. Create a regional workforce development council of employers, workers, training providers, labor unions, and parents using child care. WDB chairs the council,

2. develop employer panels for operators not offering licensed care to address regulatory barriers that can impede offering better wages and benefits,

3. Create a panel of historically marginalized workers, including refugees, to increase worker knowledge of employee rights. Urban and rural workers will each have significant roles,

4. Create a career lattice showing connections between childcare workforce entry-level jobs and various careers within the sector and in adjoining sectors so that childcare workers can increase their income along a career pathway,

5. Develop a resource map of funding that can assist in training and education in the sector,

6. Develop curriculum at regional training providers to implement pathways, adapt existing instructional formats to maximize online instruction, and compress instructional time, and

7. Develop a data reporting mechanism to highlight wages and inform workers about choices.

READ THE PRESS RELEASE

For More Information, Contact:

Deputy Director Fiston Makoma

Phone: 315-207-6951 Ext. 153

Email:

Funding for the Greater Mohawk Valley Childcare grant is supported by the United States Department of Labor. A total of $398,657.00 (84.17%) of the program is financed with federal funds, and $75,000.00 (15.83%) is funded by non-federal sources.