Millions of dollars in grant funding is being made available to help stabilize the early learning and child care industry, but as providers wait for cash to flow their way, worsening staff shortages are forcing some to abruptly close.

Indiana is making more than half a billion dollars available to early learning providers across the state, through a grant program that aims to stabilize the industry as some providers struggle to keep their doors open.

According to Early Learning Indiana, more than $1 billion in federal COVID-19 relief is coming to Indiana specifically for child care an amount providers likely won't see again.

The Closing the Gap report from Early Learning Indiana looks at several factors to calculate communities' early learning resources, including how many seats are available, quality of programs, affordability and how many options families have.

The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration announced this week that scholarships through the Build, Learn, Grow program will be available until March 2022. They were initially slated to end this October.

Indiana's largest early learning nonprofit is awarding a handful of groups $100,000 in grant funding, aimed at streamlining business services for child care providers to save them time and money.

If some of your students don't stay, how do you afford to continue for the ones that need you? Child care provider Amber Gritter managed to do that during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is part of her story.

Even before COVID-19, the child care industry was characterized by thin margins and low worker pay. A year into the pandemic, some local providers are barely hanging on.

As Indiana approaches a year since the COVID-19 shutdown, child care providers continue to face new realities as they try to keep doors open. While many high-quality providers once grappled with a shortage of child care seats, theyre now facing a shortage of children to fill them.

Nearly one in five child care providers in Indiana say they are likely to permanently close in the future, according to a survey conducted by the Office for Early Childhood and Out of School Learning at the end of last year.