Learn how Cambridge's emphasis on transparency and communication has helped the city create a system in which a family's income is not a factor in their ability to access a quality learning environment.
Last year, we analyzed 50 CCDF state plans to identify the common themes and trends in Child Care Resource and Referral responsibilities throughout the country. One of our biggest takeaways was the noticeably increasing emphasis on CCR&Rs as supply building and workforce development hubs.
Since then, more than a few states have found themselves grappling with both a lack of available child care slots and massive workforce crises brought on by the expiration of Covid-era funding, the unsustainable blend of low wages and skyrocketing prices, and persistent underinvestment in the system. According to a December 2025 article from The Century Foundation, workers in 43 states make more money in retail sales than in child care. It’s easy to see why people are leaving the profession.
At the same time, the proliferation of private child care marketplaces and an ongoing effort by states to develop centralized child care search portals have significantly reduced demand for the “referral” half of “resource and referral.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as advancements in technology have made self-service options increasingly prevalent in all aspects of our lives, but it does necessitate a pivot for some orgs that have evolved around the legacy model.
As we look ahead to the future of CCR&Rs, new possibilities have already started to emerge for these orgs that we’ve previously referred to as “the glue that holds our early care and education systems together.”
Note: Much of what we discuss in this article aligns with Child Care Aware of America’s 2025 position statement, Making Child Care Strong: The Role of Child Care Resource & Referral Organizations. We’ve built on this work by pulling out specific examples, making a few connections to industry trends, and adding a prediction or two based on where the winds appear to be blowing.
What Do the Contracts Say?
CCR&R responsibilities vary from state to state, so any sampling of contracts won’t tell the whole story, but we do have some fresh examples to review, with Louisiana and North Carolina both issuing RFP/RFAs for their respective CCR&R networks in 2026. These procurement documents can tell us a lot about state priorities and the scope of work being delegated out to resource and referral organizations.
If we journey back in time 15 years to the 2011 version of Louisian’s bid, we can see that “Consumer Education and Referral Services and Capacity Building” was listed as the number one responsibility for contractors. In contrast, the 2026 version barely mentions referrals as just one of many services to be offered by their Early Learning Resource Centers, with a much stronger emphasis on holistic family and child development resources and education. This 15-year shift in priorities and evolution of services offers a microcosm of what’s been happening across the broader CCR&R national landscape.
Interestingly, both states open their proposals with statements pointing to kindergarten readiness as a primary objective for their ECE systems. This is a relatively uncontroversial premise, but it’s worth noting that this stance effectively positions both ECE providers and the CCR&Rs supporting them as critical contributors to a state’s overall education pipeline, even in the absence of any of the infrastructure needed to measure their impact.
In both cases, the solicitations are dominated by some combination of coaching, technical assistance, and professional development. North Carolina’s bid dedicates two and a half pages to how CCR&Rs will be expected to “implement North Carolina’s Professional Development Framework for Continuous Quality Improvement.” Two more pages outline the expectations for TA and training content and the implementation of a “professional development learning community (PLC) centered around growing the management skills of current and aspiring child care directors/administrators.” The family resource hub gets just two paragraphs and a mention of providing consumer education through websites and partnerships, as opposed to direct referral services.
We’ve explored this phenomenon in greater detail elsewhere, most notably in our article When Tech Vendors Compete with Public Infrastructure, but it’s worth calling out again: Just a few short years ago, the “referral” half of “resource and referral” informed the way many CCR&Rs were staffed and structured. Now, the vast majority have had to adopt new roles and skillsets to keep up with the changing landscape. Agility in the face of adversity has become a must-have organizational trait in the current climate.
What Does It Mean to Be a Workforce Development Hub?
We should acknowledge the increasingly broad spectrum of workforce supports provided by CCR&Rs, from one-on-one coaching and mentoring for educators to mandatory annual training delivery, business coaching for child care owners and directors, and ad hoc technical assistance for any obstacles that come up along the way. If one were to compare CCR&Rs to a typical school district, these organizations are essentially playing the roles of internal IT, instructional coach, human resources manager, data coordinator, and accounting specialist, all combined in one shared service for anywhere from dozens to thousands of providers in both centers and family child care homes.
Business coaching
Child care supply remains a challenge throughout much of the country. CCR&Rs are often tasked with tackling the problem from a variety of angles. One of those is helping owners build the entrepreneurial and administrative skill sets needed to run a successful and sustainable child care business. This is heavily emphasized in states like Oregon, where every single county is classified as a child care desert for infants and toddlers.
In states like Iowa that have invested in Child Care Management Software (CCMS) to help providers strengthen their business operations, CCR&Rs play a unique role in helping providers get trained on these tools and are tasked with demonstrating the efficacy of the state’s investments. Mid-Sioux Opportunity in Iowa, the CCR&R that administers the statewide Child Care Collaborative of Iowa, assigns Financial Management Coaches throughout the state to help strengthen fiscal sustainability and ensure providers are effectively using their state-funded subscriptions to CCMS. Like other CCR&Rs responsible for this work, it’s incumbent on them to demonstrate the impact of their business coaching efforts and, where possible, tie those efforts to outcomes.
Instructional coaching
In states like Louisiana, where quality is measured more on process than structural indicators, CCR&Rs play a larger role in coaching providers on effective classroom interactions, curriculum selection, and learning standards. This approach has been shown to be more effective at improving teacher practice than sit-and-get workshop models of professional development. Effective instructional coaching often includes opportunities for self-reflection, best practices aligned with assessed learning domains, or a guided review of live observations paired with follow-up training and resources on specific domains or strategies.
On an individual level, CCR&Rs work closely with educators to support their career journeys, from entry-level credentialing to higher levels of education and certification. Many offer a mix of live and asynchronous training opportunities, and some go so far as to help educators develop customized learning pathways aligned with an individual professional development plan.
Trends to watch: One of the more intriguing concepts we’ve seen recently is CCR&Rs partnering with their local school districts and colleges to offer introductory courses aligned with CDA requirements as early as high school. This approach can result in a sustainable pipeline of early education professionals to fill gaps and keep workforce levels steady even as veteran educators retire or leave for other opportunities.
Family Resource Centers: An Opportunity for Integrated Services?
The ongoing evolution of consumer education responsibilities from child care-specific (information on quality ratings, child development milestones, navigation of provider choices, and support with subsidy programs) to much more holistic family supports (nutrition, insurance, mental health, crisis intervention, housing assistance, etc...) is one of the most significant trends worth keeping an eye on.
This immediately brings to mind Wisconsin’s model, highlighted in our September 2025 Faces of ECE interview with leaders from Thriving Wisconsin, which administers both the state’s CCR&R network and its Family Resource Center network. I reached out to Assistant Director Connie Dunlap for her take on the perceived overlap between CCR&Rs and FRCs. Here's what she said:
A best-practice model, and one that Wisconsin has intentionally pursued, is the development of ‘combined’ or ‘joint’ agencies that are funded to provide both CCR&R and FRC services. This integrated approach creates a true ‘no wrong door’ entry point for anyone who cares for children—whether a parent, caregiver, or child care provider—while preserving the integrity and expertise of both service models…
From Thriving Wisconsin’s perspective, the future is less about merging models into a single function and more about intentional alignment, integration, and clear role definition, supported by funding structures that allow agencies to respond to the increasingly complex and holistic needs of families and early childhood systems.
Connie’s take makes a world of sense, and an integrated, “no wrong door” approach feels much more efficient and accessible for families than the more siloed traditional model, in which CCR&Rs and FRCs operate independently of each other while often serving the same families at the same time, without connecting the dots or sharing the data. Most parents and caregivers don’t have the context or understand the nuance behind why finding child care or applying for child care subsidies is materially different from other parenting support programs.
A Future of Partnerships and Creative Thinking
As state contracts for resource and referral services continue to evolve to meet the needs of the moment, many CCR&Rs are taking the initiative to think beyond “the way it’s always been done” to come up with innovative new approaches to solving longstanding challenges.
Along with the aforementioned partnership opportunities with school districts, colleges, and Family Resource Centers, we’ve also seen CCR&Rs pursue joint initiatives with other social services-adjacent organizations, hospitals (for mental health services), chambers of commerce, municipal governments, philanthropic organizations, and many more. High-quality child care access and affordability is a public health concern, a driver of local economies, and a key part of the education system, all rolled into one.
The CCR&R community is a resilient, mission-driven, and tightly connected network. The “how can we learn from each other?” mentality is strong, and will be crucial for the ongoing health of the system. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how the landscape continues to evolve, with an eye toward raising awareness of what’s working throughout the country.
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