Grant boosts UW child care

The university will use a new $247,200 federal grant to provide campus-based infant and toddler care for low-income student parents.

The grant will help expand campus day care for infants and toddlers whose student parents are recipients of or eligible for the federal Pell grant. Approximately 4,000 students received the need-based grants in 1998-99, 15 percent of whom were parents.

“Low-income student parents consistently cite the lack of child care access as a barrier in completing their education,” says Lynn Edlefson, director of the Office of Campus Child Care. The university will receive $61,800 each year of the four-year grant and use the funds to support infant/toddler care at three locations: the Bethany Preschool Lab, 3910 Mineral Point Road; the Infant Toddler Program, 1800 University Ave.; and the Waisman Center.

In June, UW–Madison opened its first infant care facility for eight children ages six weeks to 30 months, and it has plans to create another 20 infant/toddler child care slots by next summer. The grant money will create an additional eight to 14 part-time and full-time infant/toddler care slots for undergraduate parents.