THE CHILDREN'S COUNCIL OF

Hurrican relief - donations and grants received to support child care businesses and individuals who were impacted by hurricane helene. 18 local child care businesses received financial support for loss of revenue (month of october 2024) allowing the child care businesses to pay staff while they were temporarily closed or relocated. Funding also provided for cleaning up and repairing facilities damaged by the hurricane. 462 individuals/families impacted by the hurricane received emergency support.

Child care and education affordability - the children's council provided funds to support 11 (of 77 children) who received child care subsidy.

Child care and education qualitywe provide child care resource & referral services and work with early childhood teachers and directors to offer technical assistance, professional development and training through our ccr&r services and pathways to accreditation program. All childcare centers and family home care sites in watauga county were offered free services as listed above. 167 teachers benefited from high-quality training. 46 trainings were held. 11 centers participated in our dual quality enhancement program and received dual subsidy dollars to increase the wages of their lead teachers to at least $12 per hour. Dual school - a 1/2 day, high quality preschool program for students who are english language learners. We served 9 students in fy 24-25.resource library - 55 individuals made 146 visits to check out resource library materials in fy 24-25.early childhood literacy1,052 chldren received books through dolly parton imagination library (dpil). Dpil distributed 10,166 books to these children.135 children, 144 parents and 10 early childhood education programs were served in our raising a reader program.