During PDG-I in 2019, the team took advanced systemic approaches to expand family access to information they need to support their child’s development and to choose quality child care that fits their needs. Over the next three years of PDG-R, the team expanded promising approaches to building parent and caregiver understanding of children’s development, engaged parents as critical stakeholders, and made information readily available and easy to navigate so that parents could find child care and enroll in a timely manner.
Activity 3: Maximizing Parental Knowledge & Choice (PDG-I)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
During PDG-I in 2019, the team took advanced systemic approaches to expand family access to information they need to support their child’s development and to choose quality child care that fits their needs.
Start Date: 7/1/2019
End Date: 6/30/2020
Partners:
- California Department of Education (CDE)
- Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE)
- Child Care Resource Center (CCRC)
- Kern County Superintendent of Schools
Activity 3a: Create Parent Interface and Consumer Database (PDG-I)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
Informed by the charge in Assembly Bill 2960, the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) engaged stakeholders in the design of an integrated data system and parent interface to help families easily access services and programs. In partnership with the California Department of Education and the SCCOE, the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network continued its work on California’s Consumer Education Portal to ensure parents have access to information on quality care and to simplify the search process.
Start Date: 7/1/2019
End Date: 12/30/2020
Deliverables:
Partners:
- California Department of Education (CDE)
- Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE)
- California Child Care Resource & Referral (R&R) Network
Activity 3b: Expand Families’ Access to the Information They Need (PDG-I)
Category: Familiess
Status: Complete
The Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) engaged families through parent cafés to enhance parents’ understanding of their roles in their children’s development by utilizing “Learn the Signs, Act Early” resources. CCRC partnered with the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network to facilitate a state-level Parent Committee of early learning and care (ELC) system beneficiaries, articulate parent perspectives on ELC, and engage in the development of the PDG Strategic Plan and other efforts.
Start Date: 7/1/2019
End Date: 6/30/2020
Partners:
- Child Care Resource Center
- California Child Care Resource & Referral (R&R) Network
Activity 3c: Enhance Family Engagement & Strengthening (PDG-I)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
The Kern County Superintendent of Schools expanded the Strengthening Families communities of practice with the state’s local resource and referral agencies to promote widespread training and utilization of the Strengthening Families framework.
Start Date: 7/1/2019
End Date: 6/30/2020
Partners:
- Kern County Superintendent of Schools
Activity 3d: Build Family Stories & Build LPC Capacity (PDG-I)
Category: Infrastructure
Status: Complete
The local child care and development planning councils (LPCs) worked with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to collect the necessary data for the PDG needs assessment; to build their capacities to sustain consistent, expanded data collection beyond the federal grant; and to utilize the results to more effectively ensure that local families have access to quality early learning and care services.
Start Date: 7/1/2019
End Date: 6/30/2020
Partners:
- American Institutes for Research (AIR)
Activity 3e: Convene Parent Committee (PDG-I)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
WestEd and the California Department of Education worked with numerous organizations and several parents throughout the state of California to gather opinions and information regarding preschool age children, their needs, and the needs of their families overall. The hope was to establish a better understanding of where the state of California stands with regard to families with preschool age children and how they can be helped going forward.
Start Date: 7/1/2019
End Date: 6/30/2020
Partners:
- California Department of Education (CDE)
- WestEd
Activity 3: Maximizing Parental Knowledge & Choice (PDG-R)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
The Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) expanded promising approaches to building parent and caregiver understanding of children’s development. CCRC engaged parents as critical interest holders by making information readily available and easy to navigate so that parents could find child care and enroll in a timely manner.
Some activities included the expansion of the parent cafés, development of an Early Childhood Provider Café model, facilitation of a virtual Parent Consortium to inform statewide early childhood initiatives, and further development of the Statewide Verification Hub.
Start Date: 7/1/2020
End Date: 12/31/2023
Last Updates:
CCRC conducted café curriculum trainings—including follow-up meetings and communities of practice for ongoing support—for all 10 of California’s Quality Counts California (QCC) regional hub leads as well as the Tribal Child Care Association of California.
CCRC continued to support parent cafés and feedback sessions during which community input was gathered and then elevated to statewide decision makers. Topics addressed included transitional kindergarten and universal preschool, special needs and child care, and equity and child care. Parent testimonials and updates on CCRC’s activities can be found on the CCRC website.
Partners:
- Child Care Resource Center (CCRC)
Activity 3a: Expand Parent Cafés (PDG-R)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
This work built on the Parent Café model developed under the PDG-I with the Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) conducting additional parent cafés. In light of COVID-19, CCRC has adapted to a completely virtual Parent Café model, which has enabled them to conduct even more parent cafés than initially envisioned. This work has given us the opportunity to begin strengthening engagement with vulnerable families.
With PDG-I funding, the state established parent cafés as a two-generational approach to provide parents with information to support responsive parent-child relationships and build knowledge of developmental milestones and protective factors.
The state used PDG-R funds to expand parent cafés and create a robust and engaging parent network. The purpose of parent café expansion was to begin strengthening engagement with vulnerable families, such as language learners, parents of children with disabilities, parents of rural and tribal families, families experiencing trauma, and so on. Through these parent cafés and through these spaces, CCRC conducted enhanced connections to support not only child care services but also other family support services.
Start Date: 7/1/2020
End Date: 12/31/2023
Last Updates:
Through PDG-R funding, resource and referral agencies have worked together to strengthen their relationships with parents and caregivers in their communities. The café experience has given participants the tools needed to increase family strength and resilience. Families have had an opportunity to come together to engage in meaningful, reflective conversations to promote collaboration, peer-to-peer engagement, and empowerment.
Cafés focused on different topics and themes to give parents and caregivers the space and time to discuss and share their lived experiences:
- Year 1 focus: Be Strong Families Vitality Cafés: A Healthy Family Is a Strong Family
- Year 2 focus: Zero to Three: The Growing Brain
- Year 3 focus: American Psychological Association: ACT Raising Safe Kids
Visit the CCRC website for more information.
Partners:
- Child Care Resource Center (CCRC)
Activity 3b: Implement Early Childhood Provider Cafés (PDG-R)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
The Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) leveraged the Parent Café model to conduct early childhood cafés with home visiting providers; family child care providers; and family, friend, and neighbor providers with the goals of building the capacity of these providers to implement best practices in infant and toddler care and social–emotional and child development and building their capacity to support protective factors and utilize the curricula while providing care or during home visits. These new early childhood cafés supported information sharing and integration of new knowledge, created connections among providers, and expanded the use of Act Early.
Start Date: 9/30/2020
End Date: 12/31/2023
Last Updates:
Using various training curriculum content, the CCRC curriculum team created café themes and conversation questions to direct participant discussions. Café facilitators from resource and referral agencies across California were trained on the curriculum and café topics and given the tools to support their participants with pertinent information and resources.
Cafés were available for specific groups such as parents; family, friend, and neighbor caregivers; family child care providers; and home visitors. Café materials were and are available in English, Spanish, and Chinese.
Partners:
- Child Care Resource Center (CCRC)
Activity 3c: Convene Virtual Parent Consortium (PDG-R)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
The Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) built on parent engagement efforts initiated through the PDG-I’s Parent Advisory Committee to establish and convene a Parent Consortium and engage a broader and more diverse group of parents. Parent Consortium participants represented different geographic regions (urban, suburban, rural, etc.), with special attention paid to engaging linguistically diverse groups of parents; ESL parents; parents who are experiencing trauma, including homelessness and disasters; and others. The Parent Consortium convened virtually to gather feedback on the birth-to-five system, inform system reform efforts to meet family needs, and provide input and feedback to California’s Early Childhood Policy Council Parent Advisory Committee. The Parent Consortium served as a peer-to-peer network to develop parents’ leadership and advocacy skills and to connect parent leaders and advocates across the state.
Start Date: 1/1/2021
End Date: 12/31/2023
Last Updates:
CCRC was required to provide a minimum of five feedback sessions per year. The community engagement facilitator recruited parent and caregiver participants who had attended cafés or who had received services through a resource and referral (R&R) agency (such as subsidized child care).
The community engagement facilitator recruited participants for feedback sessions in the following ways:
- By personally attending PDG-R cafés hosted by R&Rs and sharing session details with participants
- By directly requesting a list of interested participants from the hub leads, café host, or both
Because topics were specific and sensitive, CCRC requested that the facilitator recruit participants who matched certain criteria.
CCRC coordinated the feedback sessions to collect information from a broad representation of parents and caregivers. These small group sessions afforded attendees a safe space to discuss family needs, availability of services, and areas where services are either not available or not meeting family needs.
These sessions fulfilled multiple purposes:
- Provided a bidirectional pathway to engage parents
- Ensured representation across geographic regions (including urban, suburban, and rural)
- Met parents where they are by convening virtually and in person
- Served as peer-to-peer networks to develop parent leadership and advocacy skills
- Engaged tribes, linguistically diverse groups, and parents experiencing trauma
- Gathered feedback on the birth-to-five system, informed system reform efforts to meet family needs, and provided input to the Early Childhood Policy Council Parent Advisory Committee
Partners:
- Child Care Resource Center (CCRC)
Activity 3d: Expand and Articulate Consumer Education Database (PDG-R)
Category: Families
Status: Complete
The Statewide Verification Hub (SVH) is a multi-department Information Technology (IT) solution with California Department of Social Services (CDSS) and Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), that will improve California families' access to services by streamlining the eligibility verification process for many California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHSA) means-tested programs, with initial efforts focusing on CalFresh, CalWORKs, child care programs, and Medi-Cal. While upholding Californians' privacy and security, the new IT effort will develop a modernized and leverageable Hub that will connect eligibility case management systems with near real-time data, such as income information, identity validators, non-cash assets, demographics, vital statistics, immigration status, etc. This data is necessary to support eligibility and benefit level determinations for means-tested human services programs, as well as federally mandated Income Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) data matches. The SVH solution will assist in bringing key programs together with the common goal of producing fast and accurate verification for eligibility determinations for needs-based programs.
Start Date: 7/1/2020
End Date: 12/31/2023
Last Updates:
The transition of multiple child care and development programs to CDSS from the California Department of Education took effect July 1, 2021. In accordance with the Budget Act of Fiscal Year 2020–21, the planning for the Brilliant Beginnings data landscape was closely tied to this transition.
In its new role in the administration of child care and early learning, CDSS has worked to develop the architecture and framework for Brilliant Beginnings. PDG-R funding supported various activities tied to Brilliant Beginnings and its flagship projects:
- California Supporting Providers and Reaching Kids (CalSPARK)
- Child care consumer education
- Improvements in the statewide child care data landscape
The CDSS team envisioned CalSPARK in particular as a technology tool to better facilitate state operations for child care programs.
Beginning with the launch of MyChildCarePlan.org on October 11, 2022, CDSS significantly improved statewide consumer education supports available to families and providers. CDSS has also explored opportunities to expand its capacity to govern and gain insight from child care data.
These opportunities included collaborations with state and local partners and integration with several other CDSS and California Health and Human Services agency efforts.
Partners:
- California Department of Social Services (CDSS)
Activity 3e: Establish Cross-Agency Training (PDG-R)
Category: Infrastructure
Status: Complete
The Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) developed and implemented cross-agency training to for state professionals.
Start Date: 7/1/2020
End Date: 12/31/2023
Last Updates:
CCRC conducted café curriculum trainings—including follow-up meetings and communities of practice for ongoing support—for all 11 regional resource and referral leads, as well as the Tribal Child Care Association of California.
Partners:
- California Department of Social Services (CDSS)
- Child Care Resource Center (CCRC)