Publications - Connecting California Families

Child Care Funding: Program Integrity Measures

Agencies are required to determine, administer, monitor, and audit the error rate in the following areas: Eligibility, Need, Family Fee Assessment, Provider Payments.

Families Can’t Find Affordable Child Care

Families across California face a complex child care landscape shaped by cost, availability, and access, with data revealing how these challenges vary across the state.

Anatomy of a Child Care Funding Dollar

A key strength of agencies contracted to provide child care services is the community-based nature of the service delivery. Rather than the state contracting with child care providers located across our vast state, these services are provided by staff who live in and intimately know that community, allowing for culturally and linguistically relevant services for providers and families.

Child Care Conditions: The Costs of Doing Business

Rising costs and increased regulations continue to place mounting pressure on nonprofit organizations. In California, stress on the system is especially driven by for profit competition, threats of defunding, and costs such as unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, rent, utilities, healthcare, and litigation. This escalation has created a structural imbalance between an increased demand for services and operating costs that outpace revenue streams.

TIC Year 3 Brief: From Support to Strength: Stipends Helping Providers Thrive

Child care providers who completed the Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) cohort (8 hours of training plus three cafés) were awarded a $500 stipend. In early 2025, 374 providers received these stipends, with a majority directing funds toward enhancing their child care businesses.

TIC Year 3 Brief: From Training to Transformation: TIC in Action

Since July 2023, the Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) initiative has been funded through the Service Employees International Union Education and Support Fund (SEIU ESF) in partnership with Child Care Providers United - CA (CCPU) and carried out by Child Care Resource Center (CCRC). Together, these efforts have engaged more than 2,500 providers through 164 training cohorts and 492 cafés across multiple regions of the state.

TIC Year 2 Report: Building Resilient Communities Through Statewide Trauma Informed Care Training and Cafés for Child Care Providers

In December 2022, Child Care Resource Center (CCRC) entered a $7 million joint training partnership with CCPU that aims to train child care Resource and Referral (R&R) professionals in Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) to better support children who have experienced trauma.

Explore Our Data Briefs

California's child care landscape is complex, and data helps us navigate it together. This growing library of statewide data briefs is produced in partnership with regional R&R agencies across California, featuring agency-specific briefs and our Statewide Data Compendium.

Explore briefs