What is a Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) agency? What role do CCR&Rs play in the early care and education ecosystem? Who oversees the CCR&Rs, and how are they governed? The answers are more nuanced than you might think, and largely depend on where you’re located.

We dove deep into the new Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) state plans to identify the common threads, the governance structures, and the varying levels of responsibility each state is currently assigning to their CCR&Rs.

Background: The DNA of CCR&R

America’s CCR&R system can trace its roots back to the 1960s and ‘70s, when an influx of women entering the workforce led to a need for consumer education regarding what child care options were available and support for providers to build supply and improve the quality of care. More plainly put, Americans needed access to people who were experts on the availability and business of child care, and CCR&Rs provided the infrastructure and staffing to fill that need.

In the decades since, CCR&Rs have built a reputation for providing highly personalized, 1:1 support for families and providers through some combination of self-service resources, phone referrals, and in-person meetings with dedicated staff. They lead community outreach efforts to raise awareness and encourage participation. They walk families through the process of determining eligibility and applying for various aid programs and match children to providers who align with the environment and services they need. They help those who are interested in providing care navigate the licensing process and educate their staff on everything from health and safety to child development. They serve as provider data collection and maintenance hubs, including enrollments and openings, market rates, supply and demand, and other critical information used to inform policy decisions.

Suffice to say, CCR&Rs are, in many ways, the glue that holds our early care and education (ECE) systems together. Let’s take a look at how it’s happening throughout the country. Important note: This research only captures the CCR&Rs that are directly affiliated with, contracted with, or funded by their respective states. There are also a significant number of independent local and regional non-profits providing similar services, often in parallel with those referenced in the CCDF plans.

Five Unique Contracting Models

We analyzed 50 new CCDF state plans (including DC, but not Wyoming, which still did not have a draft plan posted at the time of publication). Of those, we identified five distinct variations of governance for state CCR&R networks.

The outsourced model (40%)

The most common approach to resource and referral throughout the country is for the state’s lead child care agency to contract with a non-profit organization to assume centralized administration and oversight of their CCR&R program. Child Care Aware is the most popular option, with contracts in Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Virginia. They also service all of Arkansas and Washington, but those states are not included in this count, as the administration is shared across multiple regional entities, rather than centralized.

Hawaii’s PATCH (People Attentive to Children) is a strong example of a homegrown organization that has been filling these needs for the state long before the passage of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014 and the subsequent publication of CCDF plans. Their role in the state’s ECE ecosystem has evolved from basic referral services in the 1970s to encompass community outreach and marketing, subsidy navigation and administration, workforce development (including scholarship programs), CACFP sponsorship, and numerous support systems to build child care supply. PATCH is also the go-to source for child care data in Hawaii. PATCH works in close partnership with the United Way and the State Department of Human Services to provide these services.

The centralized network model (32%)

The second most popular approach is one in which regional entities serve local communities while sharing services, systems, or oversight through one or more managing agencies. The primary benefit of this model is a more consistent experience for families and providers, more direct support for CCR&R staff, and a decreased administrative burden for local agencies.

Illinois appears to have this model pretty well figured out. Their 16 local agencies provide typical referral services to families and PD/coaching to providers, along with support for CCAP administration. The Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (INCCRRA) is the statewide organization buttressing those efforts with additional systems and services, including:

• Professional development, training, and credentialing for the ECE workforce
• A wage supplement program for ECE professionals
• A scholarship program for ECE professionals
• A shared network of trainers
• QRIS administration
• Training and technical assistance for local CCR&R staff
• Data collection and reporting for all things related to child care supply, demand, and quality
  

The decentralized model (18%)

In this model, CCR&R responsibilities are contracted out directly to multiple regional entities, all of whom have the autonomy to set up their own infrastructure, manage their own operations, and determine their own processes and workflows. This model often requires ongoing reporting up to the state’s lead agency for the purpose of demonstrating efficacy, impact, and compliance with contractual obligations.

California follows this model. The state’s 50+ CCR&Rs share some resources and receive support from the California Child Care Resource & Referral Network, but many are using a variety of disparate systems and processes to deliver the same services, including subsidy eligibility determination and provider management. Family experiences are largely dependent on which county they reside in.

The informal model (8%)

Only four states—Maine, South Dakota, Texas, and Vermont—did not specify any role for CCR&Rs. Some of this appears to be semantics; those states all have someone filling the traditional CCR&R role, they’re just not using CCDF to support the efforts directly.

For example, the State of Maine has a dedicated website linking out to professional development pathways for providers, child care search and consumer education for families, and information on their quality rating system. These are many of the same elements that one would expect from a CCR&R. The sites are populated by resources created and supplied by the state, the University of Southern Maine’s Cutler Institute, and various external sources. The only obvious missing link is the direct, hand-hold type of support typically offered by a CCR&R.

The centralized state-run model (2%)

Nebraska’s CCR&R strategy reads like many other states, with an emphasis on consumer education, community outreach, and supply and demand. The biggest change in their new plan was moving CCR&R under the Department of Education’s Office of Early Childhood Education. They currently list one staff member responsible for CCR&R for the entire state, with no regional office locations.

The Many Roles of CCR&Rs

All told, we identified a total of eight distinct responsibilities assigned to CCR&Rs via CCDF plans throughout the country. They are listed here in order of prevalence:

Consumer education

In general, this term refers to the following functions:

• Helping families find quality child care aligned with their needs
• Helping families understand what “quality” means, and how to differentiate between provider types, star ratings, and other crucial criteria.
• Helping families understand what resources are available to them, including social services, benefits programs, and preschool options.
• Helping families understand the stages of child development and what they can do to create a healthy and nurturing environment.

Provider recruiting, onboarding, and retention

CCR&Rs are often asked to play a proactive role in building child care supply within the communities they serve. This includes raising awareness of the need for child care with local governments and business councils, identifying would-be providers and helping them through the business registration, licensing, quality rating, and accreditation processes where applicable, and providing ongoing business coaching to center owners and directors.

Workforce development

This responsibility encompasses everything that goes into building a more knowledgeable, experienced, and qualified pool of ECE professionals. It includes creation and delivery of professional development courses and pathways, live training opportunities and ongoing coaching on child development and best practices, technical assistance, mentorship, scholarships to help alleviate the cost of continuing education, and the issuance/management of credentials marking various milestones in an individual’s career journey.

Data collection and reporting

Nearly 60% of state CCDF plans outline specific child care data for which they rely on CCR&Rs. Much of that data is used to inform systemwide policy and decision making. Examples include market rate survey (MRS) data on the true cost of child care in each community and supply and demand data to help surface child care deserts and areas where more options are needed for specific age ranges or students with special needs. Others serve as the source of truth for various provider data, including openings, enrollments, and staffing. Mandated state reporting was increasingly common this go-around, with states requiring monthly, quarterly, and/or annual reports from their CCR&Rs detailing the reach, scope, and impact of their efforts.

Quality program administration

More than a quarter of all CCDF plans call for CCR&Rs to either directly administer or play a significant role in supporting their Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). This makes sense when considering the natural synergy between workforce development efforts and quality. Alabama and Michigan even build it right into the names of their CCR&Rs, labeling them “Quality Enhancement Agencies” and “Great Start to Quality Resource Centers,” respectively. Duties include individual quality plans for providers, ongoing monitoring and assessment, and embedded quality improvement staff who serve as subject matter experts on the QRIS program’s goals and requirements.

Subsidy, grant, and scholarship administration

20% of CCDF plans call for CCR&Rs to administer one or more of these payment-based programs. Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania assign their child care subsidy programs (e.g. CCAP) to their CCR&Rs. Others, including Maryland and Minnesota, rely on CCR&Rs to administer grants aimed at increasing supply and quality. Scholarship programs serve as local subsidy or workforce development support in other states, typically at a more local/regional level.

More commonly, many CCR&Rs elsewhere in the country help families determine which programs they might be eligible for and assist with applications before handing those families off to the appropriate state agency for enrollment.

Developmental screening

8% of all CCDF plans include provisions for CCR&Rs to provide developmental screening, either ongoing in their office locations or at community events. These typically consist of standardized assessments designed to assess a child’s progress in various developmental areas, including motor skills, language, cognition, social-emotional development, and behavior (CDC, 2024).

Oversight for family child care and/or license-exempt providers

While many plans account for Family Child Care (FCC) to be included in CCR&R outreach, PD, and coaching efforts, Nevada and New Jersey both assign full oversight and monitoring of FCC locations. Wisconsin gives its counties and tribes the option to subcontract with CCR&Rs for administration of license-exempt home care providers.

Key Takeaways for the Next Three Years

While no two CCDF plans are alike and each state has its own context and nuance to consider, there are always some golden nuggets to be found in the common themes that pop up across the nation. In this latest round of updates, three trends stood out:

1. Clean, reliable data is a top priority

While provider data collection, supply and demand, and market rate survey data have long fallen to CCR&Rs, the current plans were more likely to explicitly call out pending upgrades to state data systems, a need for better integrations/more streamlined data management, and clearer definitions around data literacy and how data will be used to inform decisions.

At least 20% of all states require their CCR&Rs to submit monthly, quarterly, and/or annual reports on the work they’re doing, including various performance metrics and child care supply insights. Based on what we have already seen from this administration, we would expect to see these accountability measures expand over the next three years, making it more important than ever for CCR&Rs to be supported by strong data and technology infrastructure. Spreadsheets and Google Forms aren’t the long-term solution here.

2. Workforce development efforts are expanding

The education, compensation, and retention of the ECE workforce is clearly top of mind throughout the country.

• Alabama is looking to join the growing list of statewide professional development registries.
• Idaho is adding 1-2 FTE for professional development and TA services.
• Tennessee has set up Small Business Academies while adding additional Small Business Support Specialists.
• Georgia is taking family referrals off of their CCR&Rs’ plates so they can double down on establishing themselves as workforce development hubs.
• Indiana has gone the opposite way—taking PD, coaching, and TA away from CCR&Rs and contracting it out to SPARK Learning Lab for the entire state.

3. Family and provider experiences are still too inconsistent

One of the unfortunate outcomes of so much variance at the state level is a lack of standardization around what various processes should look like. Depending on where you are, the “child care referral” process might consist of anything from filling out an online form and receiving a PDF list of available providers in your area to accessing a mobile-friendly search portal with filtering options for types of care, ages of care, openings, and more. Direct support might take the form of two or three people in a central call center, or a team of specialists in a local office who will meet with you and walk you through everything from enrollment to assistance program eligibility.

There is no clear “right way to do” CCR&R, but we would encourage all states to avoid “that’s the way we’ve always done it” wherever possible. It’s clear from these CCDF plans that many states are searching for opportunities to streamline family engagement, reduce the administrative burden on providers, and modernize the infrastructure at the heart of it all.

Looking Ahead

In the grand scheme of things, the role of CCR&Rs hasn’t undergone a dramatic overhaul with this round of CCDF plans. We know that many states have their work cut out for them just to meet the new requirements for pay by enrollment, reduced parent copayments, and increased reimbursement rates before they can turn their attention to other needs. That said, resource and referral agencies will continue to play a major role in the overall health of ECE systems throughout the country for the foreseeable future.

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If you represent a CCR&R or coordinating agency and are interested in learning how you can modernize your processes, BridgeCare can help. Click here to schedule a meeting with one of our ECE experts today.