Page 7 - Strengthening California’s Emergency Child Care Bridge Program

FIGURE 1. BRIDGE PROGRAM PROCESS MAP
Bridge Referral and Emergency Child Care Enrollment Process Bridge Program
Transition from Bridge to another subsidized funding source
Strengthening California’s Emergency Child Care Bridge
• CSW refers child and caregiver to CCN for ECE program
• CCN connects caregiver to a child care provider (that meets the family’s needs)
• Caregiver agrees to child care provider and CCN enrolls family into voucher program
• Child attends ECE (for up to 6 months or 12 months with
an extension)
• CCN continues to look for alternative subsidized funding to “bridge” the family to
• TIC coach ofers training and coaching to the child’s child care provider
Purpose of the Study
CCRC evaluated the Bridge Program to determine valuable lessons learned, best practices and to help guide continuous program improvement for several reasons First, the Bridge Program is the only program of its kind in the United States, so there is no existing framework to guide the development and successful implementation of such a program Additionally, the legislation that created this program was intentionally broad in order to allow counties to tailor the program to meet their unique systems, partnering organizations, and populations This broad legislation enabled counties to develop a program that had the flexibility to meet the unique needs of families in each county However, this also left counties on their own to design a completely new program within agencies that are accustomed to having clear regulations to guide implementation and program development
As counties began undertaking the design and implementation processes for the Bridge Program, CDSS began receiving numerous questions in the form of ad-hoc calls and emails from counties CDSS staf answered these questions as efectively and eficiently as possible, usually through monthly webinars and formal memos from the state However, CDSS does
not have the capacity to formally document under what conditions (eg, county size) certain aspects of the program work well or aren’t working at all– let alone formulate recommendations for strengthening the program in participating counties and informing efective methods
to implement and scale-up the model in additional counties This study provides a formal mechanism to both document and share information regarding best practices in reaching and serving the targeted population while providing a foundation upon which California, as well as the rest of the nation, can implement and expand the program on a larger scale
• Child transfers of of the Bridge Program and onto another subsidized funded program
2022| 7