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Child Care Round 2

Team 1

Design a system to support child care programs to operate effectively.

List all the infrastructure elements.

Select the five most critical ones, and focus on these.

Using the markers and white walls provided in your break out area, please prepare a design in images and words that you can share with the other teams. Feel free to address any related questions or issues that you think are relevant.

You’ll have about 60 minutes for this activity.

Report Out

We had a hard time. We tried a lot of ways of describing it.
It’s really "extrastructure" - it’s licensing, general accountability, how systems talk and don’t talk to each other.

Subsidies
Parent access support and choice.
All the parts of the system that provide providers support - child care food program; R&D, funding streams.
Our resource questions - funding support, capital funding, etc.

Quality standards

It starts with families receiving high quality care.
There are local intermediaries providing culturally appropriate information.
They would be increasing the local capacity, interacting with the State.
They would be responsive to families and the child care community.

It would ensure consistent, clear regulation (laughter). So if the federal, state, or city government, so authority has to be the home for these issues. Setting quality standards.

State agency trying to maximize resources for California.
Increasing the overall capital for child care - aggressively capital resources.

It would fix the reimbursement structure - it’s a mess today.

The subsidy system would be family focused.

Families have a voice.

All of the child care dollars that came to the state would go to the state agency, All of the programs would be aligned and communicate with each other. Capital resources would be tied to operating resources.

Subsidy system is family focused and fully funded.

Team 2

Assignment: Administration & Financial Management

Design a system to simplify the Administrative & Financial management responsibilities and tasks that child care providers must do.

List all the administrative tasks.

Select the five most critical ones, and focus on these.

You’ll have about 60 minutes for this activity.

Report Out

Enrollment and attendance - this a place where technology could make a difference, simplify it.

The one thing that we realized that have all these administrative tasks, and exec directors do all the tasks. They can’t do it all, and they may not have the skills to do it. So we need a lot more specialization.

Staff for data entry is separate - more and more data is required by agencies, a bigger burden all the time.

Marketing an d fundraising. Marketing is difficult for individual providers. There are some registries.
Fundraising should go away because funding should cover true costs, so fundraising is not needed.

Someone with bookkeeping or accounting skills to do financial management. Do the billing, and bill
Outsource compilation of the financial statements to an accountant.
You have to start with a viable business plan and a budget. It starts with training.

The collective solution is the easy answer.

Team 3

Assignment: Human Resource Management

Design a system to make it easier for child care providers to select, hire, train, and retain staff members.

List all the tasks that must be performed.

Select the five most important one, and focus on improving these.

You’ll have about 60 minutes for this activity.

Report Out

We listed all of the tasks.
The best way to help - we broke into 3 categories.

1. Bringing Help In: Some times cc programs are best served if we bring help to them. Where the cc program wanted to keep control, and you needed to understand the unique characteristics of that program. (Green)

2. Collective Sharing Among Child Care Providers: you want to keep some control, but you don’t trust others. It’s unique to the cc sector. (Black) How structure, how big, and how formal, depends on a lot of things - the leadership, and the availability of resources. Historically a lot of this was done voluntarily.

3. Outsourcing: The criteria would be specialized expertise necessary. Economies of scale are possible. Neutrality of outside perspective is a plus. For example, payroll management.

There are so many care giving functions that have similar needs -

It’s all color coded.

Of all the tasks, if there’s not an asterisk next to it, you have to do it yourself.

The most challenging one is how do you increase compensation. There are lots of non-financial ways to keep people - people don’t go into child care if they want to earn a lot of money. Job satisfaction issues, for example, how to work out intra-staff tensions. You get support from professionals to help do that.

With compensation, it’s such an under-resource field, we need to work with other advocates in a coalition setting.

HR also has to anticipate the future. What is your approach to workforce development?

This could be something you join, and know that by joining , what you get is access to all 3 kinds of help.

Team 4

Assignment: Organization

Synthesize the work of all four teams from the previous round in regard to the ideal organization/structure/business model for an organization that would serve the needs of child care providers in California.

List all of the services it provides.

Select the five most important ones and describe in detail how they would work.

You’ll have about 60 minutes for this activity.

Report Out

Synthesis
How should it behave or operate.
Member focused and responsive.
Provider governed.

Revenue streams
Token membership fee.
Fee for services.
Can we sell some services to non-members?
Ongoing subsidy is still needed - public sector, philanthropy, or private.
How much is debt, how much is a PRI.

How would this be staffed?
What would resource requirements be?
Geographic scope?

The creature is a non for profit so it can be grant supported.

CCPs

In red are non-child-care providers, part of a governing halo.
Some folks from outside the industry sitting on the board
Further out are foundations and the public sector.
Closer in are universities and social service providers. They are providing research, which supports advocacy. They also provide low cost staff to cc centers. There could be site-based research at the centers.

Social service providers.

Foundations are advocating and fundraising

Is this organization going to improve access to benefits?