Supporting North Carolina Families with ARP Local Relief Funds
The Smart Start network understands that North Carolina families’ needs are great in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and their continued struggles have impacts for us all. Difficulty finding reliable child care is keeping many parents from the workforce. Child care providers are struggling to keep teachers in the classroom and to sustain themselves with low enrollments. An unsteady economy and the continued spread of the Delta variant weigh heavily on parents, with stress cascading down to children in ways that harm development.
Policymakers at the state and federal levels are currently deliberating over new investments in early childhood to address these issues. But local governments in North Carolina have also been given a major opportunity to solve these challenges at the community level.
The American Rescue Plan, passed in March, included $350 billion in flexible relief funds for state and local governments to address health and economic impacts of COVID-19. North Carolina cities and counties received a total of $3.8 billion from the ARP’s Local Fiscal Relief Fund. Most of these local governments are now in the process of planning how to use their share of the funds—and early childhood can, and should, be a priority.
Guidance and Resources
According to guidance by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, local ARP funds can be used to support certain early childhood programs and services address needs that have arisen because of the pandemic. Eligible uses of ARP funds include pay for essential workers (including child care teachers and staff), startup costs or expansion of early learning environments, supports for social-emotional health, and home visiting.
Nationwide, forward-thinking communities are coming up with creative ways to leverage local ARP dollars to benefit their youngest children. And here in North Carolina, Smart Start local partnerships are helping lead the way. 
Smart Start of New Hanover County helped secure nearly $900,000 to fund early childhood mental health consultants for the local health department. Other Smart Start local partnerships have put forward proposals to fund child care workforce compensation strategies, capital improvements for child care facilities, community resource navigators, resilience trainings, and more.
To learn more about how your community can use the Local Fiscal Relief Fund from the ARP to support early childhood, NCPC has developed an overview of local ARP funds and a list of related resources from national early childhood experts. Our partners at the NC Center for Nonprofits and NC Child have also produced helpful resources to understand the ARP and how community members can connect with their elected officials about this opportunity.
For more information, contact Michael Welker, NCPC Public Policy Manager, at mwelker@smartstart.org.
