GARDNER, Mass. - The Healey-Driscoll administration is investing nearly $2-million to expand employer-supported child care and $800,000 will be for the United Way of North Central Massachusetts working with Heywood Healthcare to help their employees.

“This is the first kind of project of its kind in Massachusetts history," project director Lea Ann Scales said. ”As you can imagine, working at a busy hospital when you're a parent and you get called in for a shift and you don't have any child care, that's bad for you. But it's also bad for the hospital's business.”

“They've been talking about this on the national stage," project analyst and coordinator Kat Deal said, "on both sides of the aisle for a long time and I think that the timing is perfect.”

The Employer Child Care Innovation Fund is a two-year pilot program aimed at making Massachusetts more affordable and boosting the Commonwealth’s workforce - starting with healthcare workers.

“Parents are going to have not only access to child care, we're going to help them find it with state of the art technology," Scales said. "Then we're going to help pay for it. So they're going to have real financial support.”

“This is a model and we hope that the model does so well that the state is looking to adopt it on a larger scale," Deal said, "which then would have larger consequences.”

Berkshire United Way is also part of the program and the United Way of North Central Mass. is hoping this is just the beginning for fully subsidized child care.

“You don't have to be a parent with children and a childcare problem to know that a stronger hospital and a better regional economy for north central mass is great for all of us,” Scales said.

“There is a larger impact to this," Deal said. "Besides just to the providers, the childcare providers, the families who are going to be receiving the support during this pilot, all of the employees that get the matching availability to childcare. And when you're in the hospital, you'll have someone who maybe isn't worried about their child and 'is their childcare going to be there tonight' because they're working a night shift and we've been able to get them some secured childcare overnight, and they're not worried.”