You are here: Home > Child Care Bulletin Issue 22, 2000 - National Leadership Forum on Child Care Resource and Referral

Issue 22

National Leadership Forum on Child Care Resource and Referral

Contents

• National Leadership Forum on Child Care Resource and Referral
• Listening to America's Families
• Current and Future Roles of Child Care Resource & Referral--Stitching Together a Strong Child Care Quilt
• SAM Plenary Sessions on the Web
• Leadership Forum Work Group Discussion and Recommendations
• Harvard Releases Report on CCR&Rs
• Supporting Change Through Child Care Resource & Referral
• Observations on Child Care Resource and Referral Services
• NACCRRA Definition and Guidance for Policy-makers and Community Leaders

National Leadership Forum on Child Care Resource and Referral

Since 1995, the Child Care Bureau has convened eight National Leadership Forums covering a wide range of topics: child care research, intergenerational child care, inclusion of children with disabilities, empowerment zones and enterprise communities, quality care for infants and toddlers, family-centered care, and consumer education. On March 3, 1999, the Bureau held its first-ever National Leadership Forum on Child Care Resource and Referral.

Carmen Nazario, then Associate Commissioner of the Child Care Bureau, opened the day-long forum, inspiring participants to "come together to share information, to develop strategies, and to serve as catalysts for sustained action toward identified goals."

The forum provided an opportunity for state child care administrators, resource and referral agencies, federal staff, national organizations, and other leaders to dialogue and develop strategies to support and strengthen the child care infrastructure, and thereby meet the needs of children and families.

It also allowed participants to identify the range and scope of resource and referral services to states, communities, tribes, parents, providers, and employers and the key issues impacting these services; to more fully understand the perspectives of those delivering and using resource and referral services; to explore the potential for child care R&R agencies to collect information about child care supply and demand; and to share innovative practices.

This issue of the Child Care Bulletin highlights the aims, strategies, and promising practices that emerged from the forum. The special 16-page issue features excerpts of addresses from forum speakers and panelists as well as recommendations reported out by each of five work groups focused on different topics relating to child care resource and referral.

Listening to America's Families
Excerpted from speech by Roger Neugebauer
Child Care Information Exchange

If we listen to the voices of America's families, we should hear three messages:

Message number one: We need to do a much better job of matching resources and needs. It is unfortunate that our nation cannot commit sufficient resources to provide first-class early childhood education for all our children. However, what is truly unfortunate is that we are so inefficient about distributing the considerable resources we already have committed.

You all are familiar with communities where there is no infant care available but where, in the same community, there is competition to get enrollments with 4-year-olds. So there is more than enough care for 4-year-olds and not enough care for infants. You are probably familiar with states that commit significant funds to child care but set the reimbursement rate so low that it pays for care that is bad for kids and it undercuts the economics of high-quality centers. You are familiar with cities where employees in one company get Cadillac care and the employees in the company next door with no support end up with Yugo care.

We have the ability to maximize the resources we are spending. First, we need to maximize the data collection potential of our nation's resource and referral (R&R) agencies. An effective R&R has the ability to collect and report daily detailed data on the needs and wants of families and on the availability and quality of services in the community. This is happening in thousands of communities throughout the United States, this constant collection of data—very important data.

What we need to do is to accelerate the standardization and the utilization of this data on a statewide and nationwide basis. We need to give R&Rs a high-tech shot in the arm so they can jump from their Pac-man machines to the 21^st century technology. There is no reason that every decision-maker in this nation, whether public or private, shouldn't know exactly what services are needed in any given neighborhood, any community, any state. R&Rs have the ability to make this happen. And it will not be enough for R&Rs simply to point out the gaps in service. Great R&Rs for decades have worked in their communities to address gaps in the child care infrastructure. There is a need for this to happen in every community. And, increasingly, there is a need for R&Rs, with their foresight ability, to work with child care providers to be aware of the changing American workforce and its impact on their services. As more and more employees are assigned flexible, variable hours, and as more employees decide to take their work home, this will dramatically impact the types and hours of care that child care centers provide. Centers need to be out in front of this curve, and R&Rs can help them get there.

Message number two: We need to do a better job of helping parents find good child care. Everybody in this room knows the R&R mantra: "This is a referral, not a recommendation." We all go to bed humming that tune. For a myriad of political, social, legal, and technical reasons, we won't let our R&Rs act like consumer reports. But what do 99 out of every 100 parents want? They want a recommendation. I used to believe we didn't need to be proactive, that we didn't need to give recommendations. I believed that the parents were becoming more savvy and more informed consumers and that as this happened they would make better choices, pick better centers, and everything would be happy.

Then I served on the advisory panel for the Cost, Quality, & Child Outcomes Study on Child Care. One of the findings really kind of concerned me. They had trained observers go in and evaluate the quality of child care in centers in four states. Then they went back to parents in these same centers and gave them the same tools, sort of the same guidelines for rating the quality of the child care in their centers. What they found is that consistently the parents rated the quality of care in centers far in excess of what the trained evaluators rated them; in other words, parents were very comfortable with the quality of care in their centers, even in centers where evaluators rated the care to be very poor and almost dangerous. So parents, it turns out, have a very wide lens as to what they consider okay or what they consider as acceptable.

The interesting finding was that parents were most in line with the evaluators in terms of rating [the quality of the service] that had to do with picking up and dropping off their child. Points where the parents were actively involved, they got a sense for it. But during the day when the parent was off to work, the parents had no idea and no way of knowing how good or bad or whatever their center was. And this study included parents of all levels of education. So this made me realize that we really cannot walk away from the importance of giving parents a very strong hand in making those very important decisions. And we all know that giving a parent a computer disk with a list of centers all over the United States is not the answer.

We all know that giving parents a list of centers in the neighborhood is not the answer. We need to exercise our all-American creativity in providing parents with enhanced details about centers regarding qualitative issues: ratios, wages, turnover, staff qualifications. In Seattle, the Child Care Resources has a computer system for child care resource and referral that is an option, and the parent can link up to their Web site and see all sorts of details of this nature about every center in Seattle. It is a huge effort on the part of Child Care Resources to update that information constantly. But what it means for parents is that, at their fingertips, they have all the qualitative information they need. We need to be more creative in creating indices and indicators of quality that parents can understand. We need to promote center accreditation. We need to give parents all the qualitative help they need, or we might as well just hand them the Yellow Pages.

Message number three from parents: We need to solve the Y2K problem. In early childhood, the Y2K problem is not about computers; it is about people. The most serious challenge facing early childhood as we enter the new millennium is the staffing shortage. In every city I travel to, the story is the same. I recently interviewed the heads of the five largest chains in the United States, and clearly, for them, the market is expanding; the opportunities are growing. But they are not growing because they cannot find staff to put into new centers, so they cannot grow as fast as they could.

I visited a YMCA program in Montpelier, Vt.  Every year for the past 26 years, their program has increased. They have added centers, they have added classrooms, they have grown. But this year, for the first time, they had to cancel their plans to grow because they were not confident they could find staff for the program. Sole proprietors around the country have had to sell off one of their two centers because they just don't have the staff to keep it going, even though there is a waiting list of parents needing the care. The story is repeated over and over again in every city in the United States, even in the rural areas.

Two things need to happen to resolve this crisis: one, clearly, fee levels and reimbursement rates need to increase so we can offer more attractive salaries for teachers. This is a continuing challenge and is ultimately the long-term solution. But, two, as we work on the long-term objective, we need as a field to work in harmony to promote the value of early childhood education as a profession. So much of our advocacy over the last 10 years has focused on the negative.

So much of our advocacy has talked about the crisis of child care, about how bad child care is in this country, how hopeless it is, how underpaid our staff is. What it gives for Americans and it gives for students in colleges and high schools is the message that early childhood education is bad, that it is a negative, nasty place, not a place you would want to go for a profession.

But, in fact, if you talk to teachers, even teachers who are paid very poorly, there is not a more wonderful job in the world to have; it is the most wonderful, wonderful thing that you could possibly do every day, with the potential of changing children's lives and interacting with children and knowing that it is going to have an impact far, far beyond them. It is a wonderful job, but we have done a very poor job of selling it that way.

We need to launch a deliberate, coordinated campaign at the local, state, and national levels to recruit new people of all ages to work in the early childhood field. We need to be proactive about that and go out and bring new people into the field. At the local level, we need to support the efforts of R&Rs to become proactive in helping all centers in the neighborhood recruit and train teachers.

I do not doubt for one minute that we have the ability to rise to meet all these challenges. If we work together, with the needs of families as the common bond, we can assure promising futures for all of America's children.

Current and Future Roles of Child Care Resource & Referral--
Stitching Together a Strong Child Care Quilt

Plenary Panel

Moderator: Patty Siegel, Executive Director, California CCR&R Network, San Francisco, CA

Panelists:
Paula Offord, Parent, Alexandria, VA
Thomas C. Taylor, President, Maryland State Child Care Association, Annapolis, MD
Karen M. Leibold, Work/Family/Community Partnerships, Lahey Clinic Medical Center, Burlington, MA
Oxana Golden, Director, Division of Child Care, Colorado Department of Human Services, Denver, CO

Viewed at each level—locally, statewide or nationally—early care and education is an intricate array of providers, consumers, funders, planners, regulators, and advocates. The provider segment alone includes not-for-profit, for-profit and faith-based child care centers, Head Start and Early Head Start programs, nursery schools, regulated and regulation-exempt family child care homes, out-of-school hours care in centers, homes, schools, youth-serving organizations, parks and recreation departments, relatives and other providers of "informal" care.

Consumers in this diverse system consist of families of all sizes and socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, with children of all ages who have a variety of needs. Funders include employers, state and local child care subsidy managers and decision-makers. Many other stakeholders from health, housing, transportation, child support and consumer protection agencies also play a role in the development of what Patty Siegel, Executive Director of the California Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) Network and moderator of the plenary panel, appropriately called a "quilt."

CCR&R supports and connects this wide variety of providers, consumers, and other stake-holders through its core services, including giving information to parents, building capacity and quality, facilitating community awareness and involvement, and collecting data. These core services are complementary, and when delivered in a linked manner, serve to improve the local or state early care and education system, and to be the "thread" with which to stitch together and sometimes even embroider the quilt.

Information to Parents

CCR&R assist families in managing life transitions that include entry into the workforce, education or training, relocation, job changes, shift or schedule changes and family emergencies. Finding and deciding on the most appropriate option for the child(ren) and the family is one of the major challenges for the working parent. As Paula Offord, the parent panelist, described, "you don't have a job and you don't have child care, so you are not sure how you are going to pull all those pieces together."

Many families who face additional challenges trying to find and maintain reliable arrangements include first-time parents as well as families who are using child care for the first time, those who cannot afford care, who depend on public transportation, whose work schedules involve nights, weekends and holidays, and whose primary language is not English. Families of children who have special needs frequently turn to CCR&R. Paula Offord, mother of a child with ADHD, recounted, "I lost my job once because of my son, where I was getting called by the day care, saying that he had had problems. … [that] I need to come pick him up." The Fairfax County Office for Children CCR&R was able to supply this distressed parent with a list of providers who had been trained in working with children with ADHD. As a result, the child is now in a family child care home where he is doing well and the mother is pleased that with CCR&R resources "it was easy for me to be able to do what I need to do as a mother, as a parent, for taking care of my children and finding quality care for them."

Building capacity, quality, and affordability

In its work with the providers of care and education, CCR&R performs a number of functions that strengthen the delivery system while making it more responsive to family needs.

CCR&R programs, informed by parent inquiries, needs assessments, and market surveys, document service gaps in order to expand capacity. Typically the gaps are in infant/toddler care and school age programs, care during non-traditional hours, and emergency back-up services. Based on this knowledge, the CCR&Rs recruit new family child care providers, assist programs with start-up, and build collaborations between child care and Head Start programs in order to increase services to families.

In his remarks, Thomas Taylor, President of the Maryland State Child Care Association, a provider organization, illustrated the work of the Maryland Committee for Children (the CCR&R network in Maryland). "We have assisted 35,000 callers needing information on starting and expanding child care programs. We have helped create almost 3,000 new family child care homes. This is important from the business point of view, because this is equal to about $37 million of new business revenue for the state. We have helped create 328 new or expanded child care centers and increased the supply of child care by nearly 32,000 spaces."

To build quality, CCR&R programs enhance the professionalism of the early childhood workforce by a comprehensive set of strategies including: identifying training needs; offering educational courses, workshops, conferences and Internet-based courses; assisting other partners in developing and offering training; linking individuals to all available training through regularly published training calendars; supporting accreditation; establishing toy- and material-lending libraries; and, providing information on career options and professional development resources.

In Maryland, according to Mr. Taylor, from September 1990 through June 1998, the CCR&R network trained 56,000 individuals interested in providing care or improving their programs.

Increasingly, states with funded CCR&R network offices have been able to further expand quality improvement activities through the administration of T.E.A.C.H. (Teacher Education And Compensation Helps) Early Childhood Project and T.E.A.C.H-like programs, infant/toddler quality improvement and similar initiatives aimed at increasing the healthy development of children.

To address affordability, CCR&Rs conduct market rate surveys, work to leverage additional resources to help parents pay for care, and often either manage or connect families to public and private child care subsidy programs. An important aspect of CCR&R work on the issue of affordability is the provision of data on the true cost of care and the promotion of increased compensation for the early childhood workforce.

In Mr. Taylor's words, "one of my concerns was, how do you get information across to parents, the kind of thing that we were learning, the importance of early childhood care, and the fact that quality child care is an expensive program, and we do need to help parents understand that it is worth whatever financial sacrifice they may have to make, while also try[ing] to get more support for the programs."

Facilitating community awareness and involvement—the employer stake

Employers of all sizes are important community stakeholders. According to Karen Leibold of the Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington, Mass., employers depend on the community-based CCR&R to meet the following needs:

First, employers need to be confident that up-to-date and accurate information about child care options is provided to their employees. This assumes a high degree of technological sophistication, which requires sufficient funding to acquire and maintain.

Second, "I need to know that my resource and referral agency is actively involved in the community, that they advocate on behalf of quality child care, that they are involved in training, that they are involved with other community agencies that support children and families," said Leibold.

Third, collaboration is important, said Leibold. "Again, this comes back to having a local resource and referral agency in my community—I need to know that my contract manager is there when I need her, that we meet face to face, that she knows what the needs are of the Lahey Clinic and how these needs may differ from other employers' [needs]."

Fourth, just as parent employees need accurate information, the employer needs accurate yearend usage reporting. This serves as an ongoing needs assessment leading to the design of additional programs, and assists in the internal marketing of the program. According to Ms. Leibold, "… the ongoing relationship [with CCR&Rs] to me is what is really important. I need to have that stable relationship. … It is by working together that we can really make a difference for children and families, and we can contribute to healthier communities."

Data collection

The collection and constant updating of child care supply data, which is both the basis for and byproduct of the delivery of the other three CCR&R core service areas, have created an important role for CCR&R in community planning. Many states have faced the devolution of decision-making on child care to county and local levels. According to Oxana Golden, Director of the Division of Child Care, Colorado Department of Human Services, the state of Colorado has relied on the statewide CCR&R infrastructure, (13 local CCR&Rs and CORRA, the state network) to address the challenges of "statewideness versus local control."

"The R&Rs have done an amazing job in terms of this devolution, with county control over rates and eligibility levels, about ensuring that counties look at increasing rates, look at increasing eligibility levels, and they have been extremely effective and instrumental in those efforts in our state." This effective role in community planning is the outcome of the linkage of core services in the Colorado R&Rs.

Child care is local. The types, amount, and costs of care available to families depend on where they live. Understanding community characteristics of care is critical to decision-making. One of the benefits of investment in CCR&R is its access to both quantitative and qualitative data on child care. The data that Colorado CCR&Rs gather and maintain in order to provide information to parents are enriched by conversations with parents and give depth to the understanding of the demand. "In some counties, the need was for the R&Rs to actually do eligibility for the CCDF parents, for the subsidy programs," Golden continued. "This is a real big plus. The parents are more likely to go into a consumer-friendly office. They really get the help they need up front in terms of selecting child care providers. They get support throughout their subsidy program."

Similarly, CCR&R can play a vital role in supporting local quality improvement efforts—"A big chunk of quality funds have gone down to local county departments of social services, county commissioners, and the R&Rs have been right there in terms of strategizing," Golden said, "… doing needs assessments for capacity grants, and in some cases have subcontracted to actually carry out the work in local communities."

A major factor in this capacity to enhance the statewide early care and education system has been the leadership within the state and in the CCR&Rs that understands and values the consistency and stability of the CCR&R system. A well functioning system can evolve responsively as the needs of families and communities change.

SAM Plenary Sessions on the Web Missed the August 9 keynotes from the Child Care Bureau's Annual Meeting of State Child Care Administrators? You can view archives of the video broadcast on NCCIC's Web site. Visit http://nccic.org/sam99/webcast.html for more information. SAM 1999 video presentations are no longer available. For more information, contact NCCIC at 800-616-2242. Monday August 9 9:00 am - 9:45 am ET (8:00 am CT; 6:00 am PT) Welcome and Opening Remarks Frank Fuentes, Acting Associate Commissioner, ACYF for Child Care, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Olivia Golden, Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 9:45 am - 10:30 am ET (8:45 am CT; 6:45 am PT) Planning for Quality -- Communities Coming Together for Children Pat Montoya, Commissioner on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Barbara Ferguson Kamara, Executive Director, Office of Early Childhood Development, DC Dept. of Human Services Wendy Salaam, DC Agenda, Washington, DC 1:30 pm - 2:15 pm ET (12:30 pm CT; 10:30 am PT) Building Quality -- Embracing Collaboration Steven Golightly, Regional Administrator and Southeast Hub Director, Region IV (Atlanta), Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Jane Hayward, Assistant Director of Human Services, Rhode Island Department of Human Services Judy Victor, Executive Director, Day Care Justice Co-Op (Providence, RI)

Leadership Forum Work Group Discussion and Recommendations

In order to move the National Leadership Forum on Child Care Resource and Referral from discussion toward action, a major part of the day was spent in work groups that formulated action steps for developing resource and referral to its fullest potential.

A diverse cross-section of participants was assigned to each of five groups charged with identifying gaps, needs and issues, defining effective strategies or practices, and listing what can or should be done to address the issues. The Child Care Bureau asked each group to develop specific measurable recommendations taking into consideration the perspectives of parents, government, providers and employers.

Group #1: Innovative Practices, was facilitated by Billie Osborne-Fears, Executive Director of Starting Point, a resource and referral program in Cleveland, Ohio. Participants identified a broad range of topics such as geo-coding and mapping, integration of resource and referral services with subsidy management, addressing work-life concerns of employers, making linkages with Head Start, child care and education, coordinating with transportation systems, and technology. Areas where gaps were noted included supply, support for providers, community awareness, information and materials for parents, and data and technology.

Group #1 brainstormed a broad array of ways in which innovative resource and referral action can and does have an impact. Some methods involved working to fill gaps that the field has struggled perennially to address, such as making care available during non-traditional hours, strengthening the quality of programs for children, making care affordable for all families, and addressing inadequate compensation for child care providers.

Other areas needing innovative responses pushed the envelope: children whose behavior results in their being expelled from center after center, or the special needs of certain geographic areas.  These wide-ranging concerns and ideas were then clustered into six areas: community awareness, supply building, providers, parents, information, and resource and referral supportive services. The six areas formed the framework for five recommendations of the Innovative Practices group for action:

1. Convene stakeholders for a discussion of methods to encourage the use of standardized quality indicators. Such indicators would allow parents to have information that they could interpret and understand about program quality.
2. Provide a federal funding stream to upgrade technology and provide hardware, software, and training for R&R agencies. This action would support an efficient, effective, and consistent information system in all communities.
3. Build the supply of child care by developing a system through R&Rs to recruit, train, and provide ongoing support to child care providers. Resource and referral agencies are a natural focal point for these activities, ranging from maintaining job registries, to providing business training for family child care providers, to implementing TEACH and similar training and salary supplementation programs. Supply building and strengthening is one of the four core functions of R&R.
4. Develop a comprehensive compensation and salary improvement system for child care workers. Staff recruitment and retention problems present the most serious threat to a stable child care system that supports the healthy development of young children.
5. Create strategies to improve poor-quality programs, such as those with major licensing violations. R&Rs can collaborate with regulatory authorities in offering technical assistance to programs identified as being deficient in meeting standards.

Group #2: Contract Management, was facilitated by Barbara Tayman, Director of Child Care Administration at the Maryland Department of Human Resources Office of Program Development. This group was concerned with all aspects of contracting for child care resource and referral services, focusing particularly on states' public funding for community-based CCR&R. Participants sought contracting models and solutions that would assure accountability and consistency of service while allowing flexibility and fostering creative responses to community needs.

The group identified four themes related to contracting:

• Performance-based contracting: Defining outcome measures for CCR&R presents a special challenge because the nature of the work is very process oriented and the results may not be immediate or easily observed, such as educating parents to make good child care choices and training providers to improve the quality of care they offer. Outcomes for children and families are the ultimate goal, but not feasible to measure over the term of a single contract period. New ways of assessing outcomes need to be found.
• Diversity: "One size does not fit all" in communities that are diverse in geography, culture, population, languages, and child care delivery systems.
• Who contracts for what?: It is critical that all four core CCR&R services are available to families in each community. Yet some "customers" of CCR&R may want to contract for specialized services, such as in-depth parent consultation or voucher management.
• Striking a balance: Between the expectations of the state and the needs of the community. How can the contract foster state level oversight and local control, and partnerships both inside and outside the contract?

To move toward recommendations in each area, participants shared what is working in their states and communities. For example:

• Performance-based contracting: Wisconsin accredits CCR&Rs based on contract standards; Iowa and other states define the core services in enabling legislation; Illinois uses a self-assessment instrument. Setting realistic benchmarks by involving all the stakeholders before contracting clarifies expectations and allows program planning to focus on outcomes.
• Diversity: Colorado defines various groups to be involved in developing local plans for CCR&Rs; Maryland requires sign-off by community groups during the RFP process; Iowa and Montana allow flexibility in the model for service provision in various areas of the state; several states use funding formulas that take diverse needs into consideration, generally setting a base amount and adding weighted criteria for characteristics of the service area such as: square miles, number of children, number of families in poverty, number of school districts, number of child care providers, and workforce factors.
• Contract coordination: The state may contract with one coordinating body, which then sub-contracts for local services (such as Colorado, Maryland, Washington); R&Rs can report to the state when services are offered by other funders.
• Balance: Wisconsin sets broad parameters, and local needs assessment informs planning within those parameters. A strong feedback loop can be set up between communities and the state. Maine recently surveyed people on the waiting list for funding. Several states require local advisory groups to monitor services. Data collection is essential to planning at the community level.

The contract management work group developed five recommendations:

1. Develop joint definitions in contracts that clearly delineate roles, responsibilities, and levels of services (outcomes and performance measures). Contract funding needs to be sufficient to support these.
2. Develop at the state level funding mechanisms to evaluate the performance.
3. Develop at the state level contracts that recognize diverse community needs, build on existing community resources, and promote coordination of community resources.
4. Establish in CCR&Rs consistent performance standards around the core services.
5. Provide technical assistance, share information about performance-based contracting, contract monitoring, RFP development, coordinating contracts, and standards/self-assessment of R&R; all done by the Child Care Bureau, regional offices, R&Rs, and NACCRRA.

Group #3: Consumer Education and Public Awareness, was facilitated by Marta Rosa, Executive Director of Child Care Resource Center in Cambridge, Mass. This group focused on CCR&Rs' critical role in educating parents in all aspects of parenting, choosing and using child care, and raising the knowledge and awareness of child care issues among the general public and particular sectors of the community.

The participants identified issues that clustered on several themes:

• Getting the message about quality child care to a wide variety of audiences with varying perspectives and backgrounds, including: parents who need to find good care; providers and regulators of care; policy-makers; the business community; health community; education community; and other sectors who work with families;
• Reaching communities rich in diverse cultures, languages;
• Developing a succinct message about complex information; and
• Delivery strategies, including PR, marketing, technical aspects.

Successful efforts shared by participants suggested general recommendations. Kansas and Missouri have conducted joint campaigns with several stakeholders, thereby developing a universal voice. Wisconsin publicizes a toll-free number for the public to find the local CCR&R.

Several states have out-stationed resource and referral services at job sites, career centers, or via kiosks in public locations. Outreach to employers was identified as an especially weak link. One state provided technical assistance directly to its R&Rs to implement state level public policy fostering employer support of child care. Parents were recognized both as consumers and resources in developing public awareness programs. The group discussed the relationship between cost and quality of child care, and acknowledged enormous disparity in quality and funding for care across states.

The consumer education group made five recommendations for action:

1. Develop a universal message that articulates the value of quality care through R&R, putting families first, collaborating with other groups, using a variety of means and venues and funding, and involving providers in full disclosure.
2. Engage state regulatory agencies in a discussion about why child care quality differs from state to state, with an eye to developing a consistent message and mission for families in all states.
3. Develop community- and population-driven efforts for reaching all families funded by government.
4. Connect R&Rs via technology so they can share best practices with each other, and within their communities.
5. Fund the R&Rs to have effective technology, allowing consumer education efforts to use multiple delivery methods to reach various audiences.

 Group #4: Leveraging Resources and Other Financing Strategies, was facilitated by Duane Dennis, Executive Director of Child and Family Services of Los Angeles. This group was concerned not only with leveraging resources to support comprehensive resource and referral services, but also with the R&Rs' role in fostering collaborative funding of early care and education systems and programs within their states and communities.

Participants listed the pressing issues:

• The need to understand the true cost of comprehensive, strong CCR&R services incorporating the four core services, and to fund based on that cost.
• Coordinating resources from public and private sources that carry restrictive funding criteria.
• Guiding local decision-making in states that do not have a strong statewide infrastructure for resource and referral, especially given devolution to local control.
• Finding effective models for collaboration, especially among partners reluctant to give up their autonomy and turf.

States have addressed these concerns successfully in creative ways. California and Washington are two states with strong R&R networks offices that leverage resources for the local CCR&Rs; Texas R&Rs function like a network, even though there is no formal, funded structure for one. Michigan, Kentucky, Washington, and New York have taken steps at the state level to integrate or coordinate child care funding. Community planning and coordination comprise an essential core service critical to the success of local R&R. To facilitate local success, Indiana requires business participation in local service delivery councils; Iowa funds a public health nurse in every local R&R; and Kansas has placed an infant/toddler position in every R&R.

The group identified five recommendations for leveraging resources and other financing strategies:

1. Earmark a percentage of all new early care and education money coming into each state for the child care infrastructure, including CCR&R services.
2. Fund research on the true cost of quality R&R services through the Child Care Bureau, in collaboration with NACCRRA.
3. Assure more flexibility in federal and state regulations in blending various funding streams, such as child care, Head Start, maternal and child health, and state-funded Pre-K.
4. Create a well-funded statewide CCR&R network in every state.
5. Ask the Child Care Bureau to fund NACCRRA to develop a clearinghouse so that all R&Rs know about new resources and how to access them.

Group #5: The Role of R&R Data in State and Community Planning, was facilitated by Gail Wilson, Executive Director of the Colorado Office of R&R Agencies (CORRA). While participants agreed that there is an urgent demand for R&R data to inform decisions at local, state, and national levels, they identified several key conceptual and practical issues that must be addressed before an effective data collection and dissemination system can be put in place.

Pressing issues were identified:

• Practical, technological issues regarding the accuracy, uniformity, timeliness, comprehensiveness, and relevance of the data collection system are critical.
• Resource issues include hardware, software, funding, staff, training, and other essentials.
• Use of data issues range from the critical question of who owns the data (especially when the state is funding the local R&R), contractual terms, negotiation, and political considerations. Ensuring that child care is included in related research.
• Data's relationship to need of those supplying the data: how to break down barriers to collecting data and funding the process.
• Coordination of data and resources across data sets.
• Confidentiality of data, especially across disciplines and organizations.

The group generated five recommendations to address issues related to R&R data:

1. Provide technology, including proper hardware, software, and trained staff. Many R&Rs have limited technical capacity. Hardware is often very limited and/or obsolete. Much available software is inflexible and R&Rs use different software packages with varying capacity and limitations. Professional development for all CCR&R staff in technology and data management is especially important. R&R staff need to include information systems expertise.
2. Collect data in standardized fields that can be linked to other data sets. Standardization is key to the usefulness of data for planning, reporting, and policy-setting purposes. This issue is closely linked to the need for software development and uniformity.
3. Ensure research component with a coordinated way to have standardization. Insert R&R data into other research and planning efforts, as well as including other projects in R&R-based projects require standardization.
4. Build new partnerships with non-traditional entities to create and share data (universities, researchers, HUD, transportation, etc.) Research will be stronger and more fairly represent the issues faced by families with young children and their communities, and shared expertise will result in more effective R&R organizations.
5. Cross-train human services and data and research staff. All R&R staff, including parent counselors, training and teaching staff, and others need technical skills.

Harvard Releases Report on CCR&Rs A publication from the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies: Training Child Care Providers to Support Families, profiles the family-supportive training efforts of child care resource and referral agencies, drawing from a national survey and in-depth agency interviews. To order a copy of the report, call HFRP's Publications Department at 617/496-4304, e-mail hfrp@gseweb.harvard.edu or visit http://gseweb.harvard.edu/~hfrp/index.html on the Web.

Supporting Change Through Child Care Resource & Referral
Yasmina Vinci, Executive Director
National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies

Several years ago, the Carnegie Corporation of New York funded a study of child care resource and referral in the United States. The study, in addition to providing a significant amount of baseline data on CCR&R activities, concluded that "Communities across the United States have developed a core set of consumer education, supply building, quality improvement, and data collection services, known as child care resource and referral."

The study challenged NACCRRA and its partners to take a number of critical steps. One of the proposed steps was to "convene a core group of national, state and local decision-makers to focus attention on the current and future roles of child care resource and referral, and recommend the strategies for securing steady and adequate funding for this part of the child care infrastructure."

The Child Care Bureau's Leadership Forum on CCR&R provided that significant step and we are grateful to the Bureau for providing the opportunity to highlight the ability and willingness of CCR&R to transform, innovate and evolve in order to meet the fast-changing needs of families and communities.

CCR&R agencies interact daily with all parts of the child care system through the synergistic loop of its four core services, and by its culture of responsiveness. By virtue of its position in the child care system, CCR&R is an indispensable partner with states and communities seeking to build quality care and education systems. Our research and observations, however, make it clear that capacity is paramount.

With our own and researchers' inquiries, we know that while CCR&R can be a highly cost-effective mechanism for building the system, thoughtful system design and sufficient funding are needed for CCR&R throughout the United States to have the capacity to be all that it can be.

Observations on Child Care Resource and Referral Services
Dana E. Friedman, Senior Vice President
Bright Horizons Family Solutions

It is difficult to summarize the insightful discourse of the day. I came with a blank page and filled a whole pad. And like the most perfect quilt given to Patty Siegel of the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, I can only speak to R&R in the places where it seems basted, where a few more stitches could be added, and hopefully show where the seams are strong.

Like many people in the room, I have had a 20-year journey in child care advocacy. My take on the conversations about child care resource and referral today are around differences from the past, similarities to the past, some apparent ironies in the field, and issues on the horizon.

Some of the differences

There are some interesting changes in the child care field as it relates to R&R since the 1970s.

• R&R is a full-fledged sector of the industry. The intermediary function it provides is a field unto itself with earmarks, databases, and statewide systems—even 100 seasoned leaders.
• I see a new spirit of partnership among state administrators and R&R. Everyone understands that they are in this together. One reason for this is that many state administrators are former child care center directors and referral counselors.
• Various stakeholders have set boundaries for their roles in the field. They recognize and respect the different perspectives of others. No longer is anyone explaining another stakeholder's views by saying, "Well, you don't care about the children."
• People are willing to talk about "bad" care. There has always been an ambivalence about exposing poor quality child care because of potentially implicating parents who choose it. But we must address the problems of poor quality care in order to improve it, and that has been happening in healthy ways.
• There are stronger, more meaningful linkages among other social services, most notably health. The contribution has moved beyond handwashing, to the role that child care plays as a critical part of a prevention strategy and service delivery.
• The academic community is more invested in child care—not just child development and early childhood departments, but public policy, economics, education, organizational development.
• Advocates are more willing to propose outcome measures. Their credibility is enhanced when they remain accountable and results-based.

Some of the similarities

• We're still underfunded. We are still struggling with what it costs compared to what's charged to parents to what's reimbursed by the state or federal government to what parents can and should pay. We are still trying to help everyone understand why it costs so much. One person described a study at Harvard that would help resolve some of the economic tensions in the field by examining different states' market rate methodologies—and the study couldn't get funded. We contribute to this by giving it away free and selling ourselves short—as always. One R&R director told of the state that asked her whether some impossible task could be accomplished in a ridiculous timeframe with a meager sum of money and the answer was an enthusiastic YES! I've had companies ask me to send them a free employee needs assessment survey, as if I had no right to charge for services because I care about children and that sentiment pays the monthly bills.
• The field is still struggling with the right way to involve parents. In the comprehensive child care legislation in the 1970s, one of the ongoing battles was whether there should 49 percent or 51 percent parent representation on local child care councils. There are some R&Rs that send parents bounce-back cards so their services can be evaluated.
• We don't take enough advantage of advocacy opportunities. Perhaps everyone in the child care industry, by definition, is an advocate, but no one gets funds to advocate. It's hard to say, "We need money to tell you why we need money." One underutilized tool of advocacy is research. It's easier to get money to conduct interviews that give you new insights and contacts or to catalog programs that capture best practice. I became a researcher because I was an advocate … not the other way around. 
• We are still searching for the right message. Some are fearful of sloganeering, but no matter how clever the words, it is still difficult to convey the many realms in which we make a difference in the lives of children, families, communities, companies and society.

Some of the ironies

• We talk of integration of services and yet funding is still segmented by agency type, target population or project focus. In a study measuring the effects of vouchers at Levi's, the highest use of and satisfaction with the vouchers was found when a plant also had on-site R&R counselors and a community giving program that strengthened local child care.
• Just as we get more sophisticated, we begin to embrace the most informal care arrangements, e.g. kith and kin, and are reaching out to them.
• R&Rs are in the business of information and yet it has gotten very used to withholding it. Knowing that parents really want recommendations, I hope that R&Rs find their way to providing them.
• Just as child care finds its place in the sun, many feel the need to call it something else. Many R&Rs are changing their names. They do it to leverage new partners, bring in new stakeholders, and convey different messages. The link to education requires a shift in language. The real issue goes beyond language. We have to help people reckon with when a private choice becomes a public responsibility. Education is accepted as a public good. Can child care ever be thought of that way? It requires justifying the benefits of child care not just for users, but for non-users—the greater society—as well.

Some of the issues on the horizon

• The staffing crisis has reached epidemic proportions. Even Bright Horizons Family Solutions which typically pays 30 percent higher wages than other centers is having trouble finding teachers. We need other recruitment and retention strategies beyond wages.
• Fertility rates are dropping. The biggest change in household composition will be the growth of homes without children. Elder care issues and other social concerns may displace child care. Our time is now.
• There will continue to be an increase in immigrant populations at both the low and high ends of the income scale. This requires a respect for and an understanding of the diversity of family needs and preferences.
• The increasing stress of work underscores the importance of establishing linkages with mental health and not just health organizations— for both children and their parents.
• Globalization leads to the need for 24-hour services, telecommuting and nontraditional hours for child care. What are the best ways to support children and families—beyond 24-hour care—when parents work late at night? Can we change work, rather than family life? The real change that these trends portend is the need to focus on our institutions and how they can adapt rather than relying on individuals to continually adjust their lives to fit in the organization.

The child care community has never been more prepared or able to face these challenges. I hope R&Rs continue the path they are on with multiple partners and funding streams. To me, R&R has been the heart of the field. Keep on pumping.

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