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Find out if you qualify for child care assistance in Northumberland County and learn more about what child care options are available.

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Child care fee subsidy

We offer child care fee subsidy for those who qualify. You may qualify if you are working, going to school, receiving Ontario Works or have a child with special needs. Fee subsidy helps pay same or all of the cost of childcare to one of the many licensed child care options in Northumberland.
Learn more about Child Care Fee Subsidy
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Ontario Works child care assistance

We offer child care fee subsidy for those who qualify. You may qualify if you are working, going to school, receiving Ontario Works or have a child with special needs. Fee subsidy helps pay same or all of the cost of childcare to one of the many licensed child care options in Northumberland.
Learn more about Ontario Works

Child care options in Northumberland

* Enrolled in Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program.

Expanding Child Care in Northumberland

Under the Access and Inclusion Framework, the Ministry of Education developed a model to allocate funding for new spaces for children aged 0-5 across Consolidated Municipal Service Managers (CMSMs)/District Social Services Administration Boards (DSSABs). The Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) System focuses on working toward a common provincial access ratio of 37%.

The model is based on available data and incorporates:

  • existing child care capacity
  • demographics
  • socioeconomic indicators
  • official language minorities
  • capacity for growth

Northumberland’s CWELCC Directed Growth Plan

The Ministry of Education has allocated 245 spaces to be created in Northumberland County. The Ministry’s goal is to have 37% access to licensed child care across the province.

Northumberland County has developed a framework to determine where to prioritize the 245 targeted growth spaces. The framework used existing child care capacity, demand for child care, demographic information, projected growth, and socioeconomic factors to rank each municipality. The rankings for each factor were combined to determine where to prioritized new child care spaces.

The neighbourhood rankings, from highest to lowest priority, are:

  1. Cobourg
  2. Trent Hills
  3. Port Hope
  4. Brighton
  5. Alnwick/Haldimand
  6. Cramahe
  7. Hamilton

Early Learning and Child Care Services Plan

In 2018, Northumberland County’s Early Years Services Division initiated a comprehensive community engagement project to identify priorities, actions, and indicators of success for the Early Years Sector. The result of this consultation was the creation of a rich and ambitious Early Learning and Child Care Service Plan to guide the system from 2019 through to 2024.

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CWELCC for child care operators

At this time, we're working with current operators with Service Agreements with Northumberland County and are projecting to be on target to meet the goal of 245 CWELCC expansion spaces by December 31, 2026. Currently, there is no further information from the Ministry of Education regarding CWELCC growth past December 2026. If you are interested in applying if funding does become available, please fill out our CWELCC Expression of Interest Form.
Submit our CWELCC Expression of Interest form