The Evolution of the Child Care Facilities Initiative
When Rachel Langford started working on the Child Care Facilities Initiative (CCFI) in the spring of 2022, she thought it would be a six-month stint. Rachel was hired as the CCFI Lead to address child care facilities needs after the passage of Multnomah County Preschool for All. SVP Portland served as fiscal coordinator, project manager, and capacity builder for CCFI as they researched and developed recommendations to address the child care facilities deficit in Multnomah County.
Almost two years later, the work of CCFI has expanded and evolved and will soon become a part of Build Up Oregon. Rachel’s new job is Early Care and Education Program Manager at Craft3, where she will lead the work of Build Up Oregon. She is “so excited to build on the foundation that we have laid with CCFI at SVP, and scale this work!”
Build Up Oregon is a partnership between Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS), Multnomah County Preschool for All (PFA), Craft3, and three other Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) – Micro Enterprise Services of Oregon (MESO), Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), and Network for Oregon Affordable Housing (NOAH). Together they will administer childcare facilities funding and technical assistance in Multnomah County through PFA’s Facilities Fund and across Oregon though OHCS’s CARE fund. The collaborative will leverage existing best practices and develop and test new models to address the complex challenge of supporting Early Child Care and Education (ECE) and affordable housing.
Build Up Oregon is partially supported by a $10 million investment, allocated by House Bill 5011, and initially intends to create or preserve 600 ECE slots by supporting co-location with affordable housing developments. Increased ECE slots will help low-income families access early education, provide economic development opportunities, and strengthen communities. In addition to these statewide funds, Build Up Oregon will administer at least $50M in childcare facilities funding and technical assistance in Multnomah County as part of the Preschool for All program. These new resources will create hundreds of new ECE slots statewide and thousands in Multnomah County over the next five years.
As captured in CCFI’s research and recommendations, funding and technical assistance are only part of the solution. Creating a healthy infrastructure for ECE facilities locally and statewide requires policy changes that ease the path for childcare providers to open and expand their businesses and the Build Up Oregon collaborative will continue to lead and collaborate on system-level fixes that address these barriers.
Rachel is “grateful for all that SVP has done to support, incubate and promote this important work. This is a very exciting moment – I'm really proud of all that we have done together!” We look forward to continuing to support this new evolution of CCFI as a Community Partner because the future of this work remains vital to the success of early childhood education in Oregon.
