SHINE Childhood Facilities Fund

Project Description

The SHINE Childhood Facilities Fund is Harris County’s first-ever facilities-specific funding for providers in the region to receive support for construction, remodeling, and expansion projects for the physical spaces in which they offer early learning and care. The SHINE Fund serves to increase providers/' access to capital and resources to make safe and nurturing environments for Harris County’s children. It also serves as a model to further examine the efficacy of offering providers access to funding pre-determined for altering their facilities, and in turn, its effects on children’s learning and growth.

This project is not yet in the implementation phase, but it has been designed to reach all Harris County Precincts. The SHINE Facilities Fund will prioritize areas within each Precinct with a High Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and a low supply of quality child care, and will prioritize providers who serve or will begin to serve infants and toddlers of marginalized backgrounds (e.g., children with disabilities, low-income children, homeless children, and children in foster care).

PRIMARY PARTNERSHIPS

SECONDARY PARTNERS

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Applicants to the SHINE Facilities Fund have been instructed (through RFP process) that project design includes community child care providers, families, and community representatives of groups disproportionately affected by the pandemic throughout program development, delivery, and evaluation.

TARGET IMPACT

Target goals of this project include:

  • Distribute 153 grants
  • Preserve or add over 3,800 new ECE spaces
  • Retain and create over 600 ECE jobs
  • Provide cost-free technical assistance, training, and business capacity building for up to 280 centers and home-based providers 

USE OF EVIDENCE & PROGRAM EVALUATIONS

A well-designed facility for the care of children considers all individuals and groups who will be impacted by the design; a child-care facility should consider the safety and well-being of children, taking into account children with different abilities, the caregivers that staff the program, and the caregivers and/or families that are to convene in the facility at various business hours. A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services across 10 states found that 96% of child-care programs receiving Child Care and Development Fund dollars have one or more potentially hazardous conditions for children. Without additional investment, these conditions will not change, and children will continue to be cared for in environments that do not meet their needs to develop, learn, and be safe and healthy.

In the Harris County area, there is currently no public funding available to provide access to funding for child- care facilities outside of traditional means, such as loans.

Data is not systematically collected about the state of child-care facilities in Harris County. However, the county does have data on the supply and demand of child care, courtesy of an analysis by the Texas Policy Lab (TPL) at Rice University. This analysis— available on TPL’s website—divides Harris County into child-care markets to show where there are child care deserts based on an estimate of demand. The analysis supports the necessity to improve both the quality of child care environments and the availability of child care slots, particularly by expanding high-quality child care that accepts subsidies. The study found that in Harris County, 83% of child care markets do not accept subsidies, 98% lack quality-rated providers, and 99% lack high-quality providers.

In addition, Harris County has conducted outreach with child care centers and child care homes, specifically those that serve low-income children and children of color, to understand their specific needs around child care facilities.

No evaluation will be conducted for this program.