What is Early REACH (Raising Educational Access for Children in Harris County)?
The Early REACH program is creating 800-1,000 new spaces within existing high-quality child care programs to serve additional children across Harris County. Developed with the input of stakeholders across the county, this program is meant to pilot a new approach to funding child care for young children, as well as support child care centers recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused many centers across the county to close.
Early REACH is supporting families and young children, child care centers, and the early childhood workforce in the following ways:
- Families across Harris County can enroll children aged 0 to 4 in the selected childcare centers at no cost to them in order to support them to go to school or work.
- Childcare centers that have applied and been selected to participate in the program will receive a contract for a specific number of childcare spaces and will be paid, in advance, a per-child cost that supports high-quality services. Centers will be selected based on their quality and ability to expand
- Early childhood educators in participating classrooms will receive increased compensation (compared to the average of $12/hour) and enhanced training and support.
For more information, please visit one of the sections below.
For Families
For Centers
