Downtown Durham Child Care Initiative

The Downtown Durham Child Care Initiative is a collaborative initiative between Durham's Partnership for Children, The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Durham, Inc., which began in August of 2009.

Across the United States, downtown revitalization is closely linked to economic development strategies that boost employment, housing, arts, entertainment and education. Increasingly, business and economic development leaders have recognized that a viable child care infrastructure improves the quality of life in a community and makes communities more vital places to live and work. Research tells us that the seeds of success in school and in life are planted well before a child enters kindergarten. A child’s earliest experiences are responsible for wiring the brain for future use, thereby building its architecture. Long-term educational achievement is uniformly linked to participation in high-quality early care and education.

Child care is also good for business: the research and experience of many Fortune 500 companies shows that helping employees to balance their family and work roles by making child care available improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, cuts turnover, and increases company value.

Downtown Durham’s revitalization over the past decade has been nothing short of amazing. To build upon that success, and to continue to attract the workers and companies of the 21st century, we need to increase the availability and quality of child care in our City’s core.

NEW: Child Care at the Core Since the first public, strategic discussion on ‘Child Care in Downtown Durham’, Downtown Durham, Inc., the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and Durham’s Partnership for Children have worked diligently to move this effort forward.  We have developed and conducted a survey to assess the needs of our current downtown workforce, undertaken data analysis of the existing child care resources and capacity in and around downtown, created an issue brief on child care for developers, and researched employer options to support child care. Finally, we held focus groups with local child care providers and downtown employers. To detail the progress, the Partnership, DDI and The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce produced Child Care at the Core, a white paper that outlines the overview, analyses and recommendations of the project. Click here to view Child Care at the Core.