The Heising-Simons Foundation has made a $500,000 grant to support Home Grown’s Home-Based Child Care Emergency Fund, a relief program to address the needs of home-based child care caregivers and providers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Home-Based Child Care Emergency Fund will support local organizations to meet a variety of needs experienced by home-based caregivers as a result of the pandemic, such as obtaining cleaning supplies and services, reconstituting lost wages and income, and providing paid leave for workers.

Responding to widespread disruptions in child care, Home Grown will award and disseminate grants on a rolling basis to local philanthropic partnerships establishing their own emergency funds that are focused on home-based child care caregivers and providers. While Home Grown will provide technical and financial support in setting up funds, local organizations––who know their communities and caregivers best––will drive decisions regarding the design of their funds.

In partnership with Reinvestment Fund, Home Grown has also created a Home-Based Child Care Emergency Fund Toolkit  for applicants to use in designing their local funds. The toolkit offers operational and logistical guidance for deploying the funds.

Preserving and protecting the home-based child care sector through the COVID-19 pandemic is a top priority of the Foundation’s Education program. Child care is a necessity, and home-based child care providers enable essential workers to continue working.

The Heising-Simons Foundation is a member of Home Grown, a national collaborative of funders committed to improving the quality of and access to home-based child care. Together with Klingenstein Philanthropies, MAEVA Social Capital, Imaginable Futures (a venture of The Omidyar Group), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, Home Grown has raised $1,200,000 to catalyze the development of regional funds to provide direct financial support to home-based child care providers.

In a crisis like this, quality child care holds us together. It will also be what is needed to get folks back to work and improve our economy. Home Grown is uniquely positioned to work with communities to fortify this essential infrastructure.

Learn more about the Home-Based Child Care Emergency Fund here.