United Way of Connecticut

An Opportunity to Modernize

The United Way of Connecticut (UWC) serves as the state's Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) provider, contracted through the Office of Early Childhood (OEC). When their referral software vendor announced the sunsetting of its program in 2019, UWC began to look for alternatives.

Presented with a chance to reimagine their data and technology infrastructure from the ground up, they took the opportunity to think big about how technology could better serve families, child care providers, referral specialists, and state administrators. UWC had ambitious data and technology goals:

1. Preserve all existing data and data fields, and make them accessible in the new system.
2. Add new data fields to better meet OEC's collection and reporting requirements, along with UWC's analytics needs. United Way had existing, trusted infrastructure for families seeking services, but they knew it needed updating.
3. The technology had to feel modern and be easy for their team to use.

In addition to a data and technology provider, the UWC team was looking for a partner to reimagine software for the state, continuously improve their solution based on feedback from stakeholders, and deliver the best user experience for families and providers.

The Information Gap

One of the biggest areas of opportunity in the child care industry is the lack of accurate, up-to-date information at every level.

Families lack accurate supply information about child care openings, providers lack business intelligence about the surrounding market (competition, rates, grant opportunities, etc...), and administrators often lack real-time data about supply and demand that can be used for resource allocation.

Using BridgeCare's flexible data schemas, UWC was able to upload all data from their existing database and build real-time connections so changes were reflected in both the legacy and new systems.

A Culture of Responsiveness and Innovation

UWC and BridgeCare partnered together to build the ideal solution for the state's child care ecosystem. As a result, BridgeCare set up a replicable process for similar state and local referral service providers to do the same—migrate from legacy to modern data systems.

Highly scalable and customizable, BridgeCare's data model can be tailored to any state, county, or city's technology infrastructure with fields and portal connections to fit local contexts, systems, goals, and opportunities. BridgeCare's technology is modular, configurable, and can be deployed in as little as two weeks.

"The BridgeCare team was responsive to our design requests," said Valerie Grant, director of the United Way of Connecticut, "showcasing their commitment to deliver a data system that best meets our data needs, functionality, and reporting demands."

To learn how BridgeCare can support and modernize your child care data and technology infrastructure, connect with one of our specialists today.