Emergency Child Care Assistance Program
Quality Care for Children’s Emergency Child Care (ECC) program assists families who are experiencing crisis situations by providing access to resources for quality child care. Since 1987, ECC has helped families in crisis achieve self-sufficiency by assisting them in meeting their child care needs; including paying for child care and helping families develop long-term child care plans. Family crisis situations include violence, divorce, starting a new job, or facing a large unexpected expense. Such uncertainty and instability make it difficult for parents to provide continuity and consistency of child care for their children. And lack of child care exacerbates their challenges in addressing their crises, including finding and maintaining employment.
Eligibility criteria (such as eligible counties/zip codes/cities, qualifying emergency, duration/amount of assistance, etc.) will vary.
General eligibility criteria:
Children must be between the ages of 0 and 12 years old.
Children cannot be receiving CAPS.
Parent must have a qualifying emergency situation (recent job loss, starting new job, homelessness, domestic violence, recent illness/hospitalization, unexpected expense, etc.).
Child care provider must be Quality Rated or in the process of becoming Quality Rated.
Household Income must be at or below 85% of the State Median Income.
*Please note that ECC Assistance is available one time per calendar year (based on the last date services were received).
Click here to apply. When available, ECC assistance is very limited and eligibility may vary by county, city, zip code or other factors. Applying for ECC assistance does not guarantee you will be approved. Once you apply, you will be placed on our waiting list. Your application will remain active for 3 months, at which point it will expire. If parents experience another emergency, they must re-apply at that time.
QCC works with parents to understand their child care needs, locates appropriate child care and/or school-age care programs, and negotiates fees with the provider. QCC facilitates the relationship between the provider and parent, monitors the placement of the child to guarantee that services are being provided, connects families to additional resources, and issues checks to the provider. QCC also assists families in developing long-term child care plans so that they can meet their child care needs when the financial assistance ends.
Thanks to several partnerships and private funding, QCC is able to support a limited number of families for specific communities in Georgia through its ECC program. Funding is provided in part by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners under the guidance of the Department of Community Development CSP Program.