Riverside County Supervisors Allocate Funds to Assist Child Care Programs

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors directed $105,990 in CARES Act funding to support nonprofit child care centers in Riverside County.

The funds will provide small grants to child care centers for supplies and other operating costs.

Throughout the pandemic, child care centers have remained open, but have faced increased expenses for cleaning, disinfection, physical distancing procedures, personal protective equipment, barriers and partitions, and health screenings. At Board of Supervisors listening sessions, child care centers expressed a need for support to stay open.

Riverside County Fourth District Supervisor V. Manuel Perez joined his colleagues in unanimously approving the funding.

"We have heard from child care providers about their needs for masks, PPEs, and funding," said Supervisor Perez. "I appreciate that we are able to make some support available to supplement the financial assistance being provided by First 5 Riverside and masks that were recently donated to Riverside County by Everrank, Inc. that we will be getting out to child care centers this week."

In October, First 5 Riverside received an allocation of $688,000 from First 5 California for COVID-19-related assistance to early learning and child care programs. The funds were exhausted rapidly, according to the Board of Supervisors.

The funding approved will be allocated to the Inland Empire Community Foundation to administer mini grants to local nonprofit child care centers. This is anticipated to help 21 child care programs.

Later this week, Supervisor Perez and First 5 Riverside will hold drive-through distributions to give out masks and supply kits with sanitizing products and thermometers to child care providers. There are 40,000 masks for child care providers in the Fourth District, made possible through a generous donation from Everrank, Inc., a company based in the Inland Empire, which has donated over 500,000 masks to Riverside County.

This information is directly from the office of Supervisor V. Manuel Perez