"Children Learning, Parents Earning, Communities Growing"
March 6, 2023 | Issue #10
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March 2023 Featured Agency Highlight
Del Norte Child Care Council
Community based public and private Alternative Payment Programs (APPs) support the needs of working moms and dads with access to child care and other supports earmarked to lift families up from poverty. During the pandemic, these programs have distributed emergency essential worker child care vouchers, family child care and center stipends & PPE, diapers, food and clothing. Throughout California, these APPs may also support parental choice to CalWORKs Stages 2 & 3, preschool and center-based programs, general child care, After School Education and Safety (ASES), Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), Family Child Care Home Education Networks (FCCHENs), transportation, behavioral & mental health services, respite, regional centers, health and safety, 21st Century, resource libraries, and Trustline.
Del Norte Child Care Council supports services for Del Norte County by bringing families and professional resources in, child care subsidy, family child care referrals, the food program for family child care providers, toy lending library, parent education, school readiness, child abuse prevention, car seat lending, child care centers for preschool, after school care, and more.

Get to know them and the full scope of their work with this Monthly Newsletter, highlighting how they are supporting the needs of family child care providers and families in Del Norte County.

 

Members of the Legislature discussed the impact lack of access to child care is having on our poorest of families, which are largely headed up by single moms and predominantly women of color, resulting in their loss of employment.  
 
Our campaign goes beyond this exciting event. The ultimate goal of #ChildCareforCA is to get a critical mass of signed letters to Assembly Members and Senators so they know that this issue is important to Californians and to raise awareness among Californians about the child care crisis.

We will need your help to amplify the campaign, share the video, our new shareable two-minute animated film, which is housed at our campaign microsite and get letters signed. A recording of the live launch is hosted on CAPPA's website. We encourage you to use the social media toolkit to share with your networks through social media posts, links, emailing your mailing lists, and more.
Guest Editorial : Wrap-around child care supports

While California has taken great steps forward in creating programs that educate our youth, along the way, we have missed opportunities to ensure the system we are creating is equitable and accessible to all. With the implementation of Transitional Kindergarten (TK), ensuring there is a place for our state’s 4-year olds in public schools allows for great learning opportunities but cannot be done at the expense of parental choice, private child care providers, or without adequate time and resources to prepare school facilities and teachers.  

Recently I introduced Assembly Bill 51 to address the unintended consequences of TK by creating a wrap-around child care system that serves the needs of working families and ensures success for children. Without strengthening the state’s existing co-mingling of childcare and public education, women will continue being forced to leave the workforce in order to care for their children and child care centers will lose too much business to stay open to care for children from birth to 3 years old. As a working mom I know that parents ─ especially moms ─ have enough on their plate already, AB 51 will make sure parents will not worry that their children are safe and learning while they are working to provide for their families.

Any parent can tell you they need care to be available beyond the 3 hours 4-year olds will spend in TK. Filing this need will be the child care centers who need state investments to afford to pay employees and keep their doors open, after-school programs in need of resources to provide age appropriate care and curriculum to, and us legislators representing Californian families who have the power to invest in these programs. When we set these programs up for success, we are supporting economic prosperity for families and the nurturing of social skills and early education for children.

We know families in California have a diverse set of needs families have depending on their location, income-level, and age of their children the system we build must reflect the wide range of needs. Filling the holes that exist in our current system is no simple task but with the largest Legislative Women’s Caucus California has ever had and stakeholders in the field, there is not shortage of willpower and ideas to build the most robust universal early care and education system in the country.