Featured Grant Story: Early Learning Centers of Lubbock, Inc.

Children drawing on an outdoor chalkboard

What is Early Learning Centers of Lubbock, Inc.?

Early Learning Centers of Lubbock (ELC) provides child care services for primarily low income families. This enables the parents to work, attend school or vocational training while their children participate in a child development program. Services are provided on a sliding fee scale based on income and other state-mandated guidelines.

Having emergency child care assistance helps families keep their children enrolled on a regular and frequent basis. The funds provided from the Community Foundation of West Texas (CFWT) grant cycle allow parents in financial situations to pay a discounted amount of $30 off of regular pricing per week for childcare while keeping the child enrolled for a maximum of 6 weeks. This helps the families financially without sacrificing their children's early childhood education.

Adult smiling with two children in classroom

The project is currently assisting 28 families, with additional reference to Child Care Services (CCS) to see if they qualify for state subsidized childcare. When a family qualifies for CCS they will no longer need the emergency child care assistance through ELC, allowing them to successfully transition out of the program, opening ELC up to the possibility of helping even more families.

Early Learning Centers of Lubbock, Inc. in Action

Matthew was a PS student at ELC. His family's only form of transportation, an older van, broke down and was going to cost several hundreds of dollars to get repaired. His parents made arrangements to get the repairs made by setting up weekly payments until the repairs were paid for in full. However, they were going to have to take Matthew out of ELC and have him stay with a neighbor due to the lack of transportation. Their neighbor agreed to watch over Matthew at the cost of using some of Matthew's family's food stamps to buy the neighbor's groceries.

Thanks to the partnership with CFWT, ELC had the Emergency Childcare Assistance program funds available to help Matthew and his family. Matthew's parents were able to keep him enrolled in ELC while his parents used the $30 per week they saved to help pay off van repairs. His parents were able to keep working and Matthew was able to continue learning and preparing for kindergarten.

To learn more about Early Learning Centers of Lubbock, Inc., please visit them at www.elclubbock.org, or at their Facebook page.