City of Boston's Office of Workforce Development (OWD)

Coordinating Employer-Driven Sector Partnerships to Strengthen Early Child Care Employment and Training in Massachusetts

Practice Area: Workforce Pathways Scope: State Location: MA Status: Closed

Project Overview

Third Sector is working with the City of Boston’s Office of Workforce Development, Community Advocates for Young Learners (CAYL) Institute, the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, training partners, and workforce boards to build and strengthen sector partnerships in the field of early care and education. This effort will identify collaborators who will recruit, train, and place teachers in the Greater Boston area to scale up the pipeline to careers in early childhood education. This initiative is one of two projects awarded to Third Sector through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Good Jobs Challenge.

Challenge

Most of us believe that children (ages 0-5 years) should have a safe and nurturing space to learn and thrive with qualified and supported educators, no matter their race, background, or circumstance. However, many cities and states fail to invest meaningfully in early childhood education, leaving educators underfunded, underpaid, and underresourced. For decades, the field of child care has been largely populated with women, more specifically Black Women and women of color, who are often undervalued as working professionals. As a result, these positions are often highly underpaid and provide little to no coordinated pathways for advancement.

Recognizing the growing need for jobs in a wide array of fields, including early childhood, and the importance of incentivizing and supporting economic innovation that can lead to thriving new industries and "good jobs" that pay Americans a living wage, the federal government appropriated in 2021 $500 million to the U.S. Department of Commerce to administer the Good Jobs Challenge. The department awarded funds to 32 employer-led sector workforce training partnerships to invest in innovative approaches to workforce development. The City of Boston's Office of Workforce Development  (OWD), one of the Challenge grantees, proposed the Greater Boston Good Jobs Challenge to build and strengthen three sector partnerships: health care, clean energy, and child care. This is the only project focused on the child care sector awarded through the Challenge.

Process

In October 2022, Third Sector joined a Good Jobs Challenge collaborative with the City of Boston's Office of Workforce Development (OWD) to provide technical assistance and strategic guidance in developing and standing up employer-led and worker-centered sector partnerships. The sector collaboration was driven by the Community Advocates for Young Learners (CAYL) Institute and the Department of Early Education and Care with additional partner support from MassHire's workforce boards and career centers; local community colleges; training and wraparound support providers; and more than 100 child care employers and family child care entrepreneurs. 

The Greater Boston Early Care and Education Good Jobs partnership recruited individuals to receive workforce training and the credentials required for hiring and/or upskilling at no cost to the participant. The partnership's explicit goal was to increase access to training and reach pay parity for Women of Color. The partnership focused on training new and current educators in center-based and family child care programs and supporting participants who want to become family child care entrepreneurs and start their own child care programs. 

Third Sector supported CAYL in orchestrating the sector partnership, serving as a thought partner in designing the training program, and providing project management throughout the initiative's implementation. Third Sector completed its work with CAYL in March 2024, and the Good Jobs project will continue through August 2025.

Results

The Greater Boston Early Care and Education Good Jobs partnership aims to train and employ 850 individuals by the end of August 2025 in either child care centers or in family child care. Third Sector provided technical assistance to CAYL in setting up processes for successful sector partnership implementation. For example, Third Sector supported CAYL through project management and capacity building within the organization. Third Sector also supported CAYL in building robust data collection and analysis and continuous improvement practices to track progress toward outcomes goals.

Practice area:

Workforce Pathways

Third Sector works with communities and our government agencies to reimagine our workforce systems so they can help people find the careers and lives of their dreams.
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Managing Director, Workforce Pathways
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