We serve children and families by supporting the development of child care systems with highly skilled professionals who create high quality, nurturing environments that allow children to fulfill their greatest potential.
Child Care Resource and Referral agencies
Child Care Resource and Referral agencies (CCR&Rs) meet a need no one else does by providing the bridge between parents, providers, community leaders, and policymakers. By offering a unique blend of direct services and planning expertise, CCR&Rs help families and communities ensure that their children arrive at kindergarten ready to succeed. There are more than 500 CCR&Rs across the country.
CCR&Rs take the guesswork out of finding and paying for child care.
- CCR&R agencies help more than 860,000 families find, evaluate or pay for child care each year.
CCR&Rs increase the supply of quality child care.
- CCR&R agencies train more than 580,000 child care providers a year.
CCR&Rs help create child care solutions for communities.
- 4% of CCR&Rs conduct community needs assessments.
- 58% administer child care subsidies for their state or county.
- 62% analyze and report on child care supply and demand.
What are State Networks?
State Networks work with their local Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) partners to help families, child care providers, and communities find and offer affordable, quality child care. There are thirty-eight states have State CCR&R Networks.
State Networks help to ensure quality and accountable of CCR&R services by providing best practices and standards, training and technical assistance, and monitoring and evaluation services. They also document child care needs, trends and impacts by analyzing local CCR&R data and reports. State Networks help improve access to quality child care options by offering statewide child care search websites and toll-free lines to families, training, scholarships and wage supplements for child care providers, and taking on quality improvement and supply building projects when possible.
State Networks are also key partners with business, economic, government and policy leaders in their community. Through these partnerships State Networks are able to:
- Improve services and outcomes for children and families
- Develop school readiness and early learning guidelines
- Put into effect child care quality rating systems
- Provide work/family discussion and services
- Support welfare reform/workforce development
- Analyze and improve child care policies
