Child Care Services Association’s vision is that all children have equitable access to affordable, high quality early care and education to lay the foundation for successful life outcomes.
CCSA improves the quality of child care in North Carolina for all children by helping families find child care, offering informational events for families, professional development opportunities and programs for providers and comprehensive child care research for policymakers.
How CCSA Helps
CCSA’s mission is to lead efforts to strengthen accessible and affordable quality early care and education by providing supports for families, communities and the workforce.
As a nonprofit organization and United Way member, we are proud to be a leader in early care and education systems on local, state and national levels.
Program Highlights
T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® Scholarship
T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® Scholarship NC provides debt-free college education with comprehensive scholarships for the early education workforce. T.E.A.C.H. is also offered nationally through the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® National Center
Professional Development
The education level of early childhood teachers has been linked with quality care in numerous research studies. CCSA offers a variety of professional development opportunities to support high-quality services, and actively encourages providers to enroll in early childhood courses.
Child Care WAGE$®
The Child Care WAGE$® NC program provides tiered education-based salary supplements to teachers, directors and family child care educators in North Carolina. The goal is better-educated teachers and better outcomes for children.
Families
We offer a wide range of services to help families find, evaluate and pay for quality child care.
Find Child Care
Child Care Referral Central offers free and convenient ways to obtain referrals to child care in your area.
Evaluate Child Care
When families need child care, it’s important that their children are enrolled in the highest quality care possible.
Pay for Child Care
Quality child care can be expensive. We provide a number of resources for families to get help paying for child care.
Providers
Our work helps educators and directors provide quality child care services to families.
Wage & Scholarship Support
Whether you’re just getting started or already working in child care, we have a variety of wage support options and scholarships for furthering education.
Program Development
We offer coaching, technical assistance, professional development opportunities and more.
Healthy Beginnings
From nutrition to behavior to homelessness services, we can help you provide healthy beginnings for all children.
COVID-19 Information
To keep our staff and community safe, to continue business operations in service of our mission and to do our part to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19, CCSA has closed to public walk-ins and face-to-face appointments as of March 18, 2020.
To read a full statement from CCSA President Marsha Basloe, explore COVID-19 resources for families, providers and more, and to find contact information for use during the pandemic, please see our COVID-19 resources page.
Upcoming Events
Research
In order to improve an early care and education (ECE) system, comprehensive accurate data which identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the system must first be collected. Therefore, our research department conducts a broad array of studies to address issues related to early care and education.
How to Support CCSA Research & More
Our work results in enormous benefits for children families and the community. Your gift may help fund our research, support a parent who is starting a new job, or assist a child care teacher who wants to finish an early childhood education degree.
Help us make sure every child has a good start to lifelong learning in a safe, nurturing, quality environment.
Latest News
-
An Invisible Crisis: Early Childhood Homelessness – A Primer
Approximately one in 18 (1.3 million) infants, toddlers and preschoolers experiences homelessness each year, impacting their health, well-being, and development. This primer explores the impact of early childhood homelessness across the United States on our young children… -
NEW: Register for Pre-K CLASS® Assessments
The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS®) is an observation instrument developed to assess classroom quality in infant through third-grade classrooms. Register for pre-K CLASS® assessments now! -
“Perfect Timing”: How CCSA’s COVID-19 Relief Fund Made a Significant Difference for Child Care Programs Across N.C.
Awarded child care programs share the impact of the grant first-hand: “…The timing [of the CCSA COVID-19 Relief Fund] was perfect. It came at a point in time where there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of demand for us to stay open, but we didn’t know what that was supposed to look like and we weren’t getting a lot of guidance.”
Get the CCSA Newsletter
Stay in the know with Child Care Services Association. We provide news about early childhood education, policy advances, positive parenting tips and more.
Have questions? We can help!
We are available online or by phone at 919-967-3272, Monday—Friday, 8 a.m.—5 p.m.