Employer Support
Childcare support that
keeps your staff at work
Foundation First helps North Central Virginia employers use childcare support to hold onto staff and fill shifts, working directly with local providers and through the VBREE board.
Work directly with local providers
Shape the solution, do not wait for it
The problem
Stop paying to replace people childcare drove away
Care costs more than a second income covers. It closes at five when the shift ends at seven. The nearest provider with an opening is forty minutes the wrong way. So an employee misses a shift, or turns down the promotion, or takes the job closer to home.
None of that arrives labelled as childcare. It shows up as attendance, as turnover, as a candidate who went quiet after the schedule conversation. And because nobody asks the question, the cost stays invisible while you keep paying to recruit and retrain.
Your exit data will not name the cause
People say pay or schedule on the way out. Childcare is the reason underneath, and it rarely gets recorded.
Shift work is the hardest to cover
Overnight, rotating, weekend, and 12-hour schedules do not fit standard childcare hours.
Doing nothing is already on your books
Repeat hiring costs and lost experience are being paid this quarter, whether or not anyone calls it a childcare problem.
The evidence
Childcare is a business issue, not only a family one
Keep the people you cannot afford
to lose, with Foundation First
Understand what employer-supported childcare actually involves
Dependent care accounts, employee contributions, partnerships with a nearby provider, shared costs, reserved capacity, on-site care. We walk you through how each model works, what it asks of the company, and which businesses it suits.
Connect with providers who already serve your workforce
We work directly with childcare programs across the region, so we know where capacity sits, which locations match your shifts, and who is worth talking to near your site.
Take a seat where the decisions get made
The VBREE board brings employers together with providers, economic development, and regional leadership to build workable childcare solutions for North Central Virginia. It is where employers stop absorbing this problem and start shaping the answer.
What VBREE is
The Virginia Business Roundtable
for Early Education
VBREE is where Virginia's business leaders treat childcare as an economic problem rather than a private one. Foundation First represents Ready Region North Central in it.
Founded in 2023 by the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation
Backed by the Virginia Chamber, GO Virginia, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, and the Virginia Economic Developers Association
A delegation in every Ready Region, made up of employers, chambers, economic and workforce development agencies, local government, planning district commissions, and philanthropy
Its aim: school-ready children, work-ready parents, business-ready communities
Ran the Shovel Ready Virginia Task Force on childcare supply, which reported in 2025, and now carries responsibility for delivering its recommendations
Your seat puts your workforce reality in front of the people who can act on it, and lets you shape what gets built in this region rather than waiting to see what arrives.
“Foundation First helped me stop guessing and start knowing exactly what VQB5 needed from us. I finally feel ahead of the deadlines instead of behind them.”
— Center Director, Stafford County
Options
Where employers get involved
The VBREE board
The main way in. A seat in the North Central Virginia delegation, working alongside providers, economic development, and regional leadership. Small by design, so each seat carries real weight.
Learn more
Community taskforce
Lower commitment. Send your HR or community engagement lead to hear what is happening regionally, what other businesses are trying, and what is changing locally.
Learn more
Understand the local childcare picture
Where the gaps are across our eleven localities, which shifts are hardest to cover, and what capacity exists near your workforce.
Learn more
Employer Guide
Employer's Guide to Childcare
How to read your own attendance and exit data for childcare signals, the full range of employer responses from smallest to largest, what each one requires, and what other Virginia employers have already done. Written for a business that has never approached this before.
The plan
Three steps to becoming an
employer that solves this
Find out what childcare is costing you
Ask your employees, and look at what you already record. Missed work, exit reasons, rejected offers, and which shifts are hardest to fill.
See what fits a business like yours
Size, location, shift patterns, employee demand, and budget all change the answer. We show you the models and what each one asks of the company.
Take a seat on the VBREE board
Join the employers already working with providers and regional leaders to build childcare that fits how your people actually work.
Guiding you
535 childcare programs. Eleven localities. One organization connecting them.
We are not selling you a program. We know the region, we know the providers, and we can put you in the room with the people who can actually move this.
Lead agency for Ready Region North Central, covering eleven localities
We represent the region within the VBREE delegation
We work directly with 535 childcare programs, so we know where capacity is and where it is not
We convene community taskforces bringing employers, providers, and local partners together
We administer roughly five million dollars in early childhood funding across the region
FAQs
Answers to what employers ask us most
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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VBREE application
Apply for a seat in the North Central delegation
The delegation is deliberately small, so each seat carries real weight. Tell us about your business and where childcare is affecting your workforce, and we will be in touch to talk it through before anything is confirmed.
Foundation First represents Ready Region North Central within VBREE, which is convened by the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation. We will talk with you first and handle the introduction from there.
Lead Agency · Ready Region North Central
A coordinated early childhood system across eleven localities in North Central Virginia.
Ready Region North Central brings together local agencies, early childhood providers, and families to build a seamless, family-centered system. Our goal is to make it easier for every child and caregiver in our region to access the supports they need to thrive.
Learn more about Ready Region