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Statewide CRE effort introduces Child Care Finder to help families locate care and connect providers
Summary
DCYF, OSPI, ESDs and Child Care Aware of Washington explained the coordinated recruitment and enrollment (CRE) framework and demoed Child Care Finder — a public, multilingual search tool that lets families find providers by commute, schedule, subsidy acceptance and program features; providers opt in to appear in searches.
DCYF, OSPI, the ESDs and Child Care Aware of Washington laid out the coordinated recruitment and enrollment (CRE) initiative and demonstrated Child Care Finder, an enhanced public search tool designed to help families navigate Washington’s mixed‑delivery early learning system.
Tasha Jorgensen (DCYF CRE coordinator) said CRE organizes partner efforts across agencies and organizations to present families with clear options and to align recruitment, eligibility and enrollment pathways. Leticia Connolly (OSPI) described TK planning resources and site visits that support the CRE effort at the district level. ESD and DCYF speakers highlighted CRE’s role in enabling regional data visibility to forecast demand and coordinate outreach.
Rob Collin and Gracie Martinez from Child Care Aware of Washington outlined the Family Access Manager (FAM) model — six regionally embedded staff hosted by local organizations who serve as community connectors, help families navigate the system and work with partners to surface regional needs and resources.
Joanna Cobb (Child Care Aware of Washington) demonstrated Child Care Finder: families can run a search by home and work commute, filter by age, hours, program season and subsidy acceptance, view translated pages in seven languages, save a list of providers, and see public transportation travel times to providers. Providers must opt in to appear and can control whether their street address is published. CCAWA and DCYF said initial provider data are drawn from DCYF dashboards (WA Compass) and that providers can enrich profiles with photos, videos and enrollment steps.
Providers asked about default profile content, onboarding and outreach. Joanna said provider profiles can include information populated historically (from coach updates or provider submissions), and that CCAWA has been augmenting outreach with phone calls for providers who do not respond to email. DCYF and CCAWA also said they will use coaches, licensors and other trusted local contacts to improve opt‑in coverage and reach providers without reliable email access.
The demonstration emphasized usability features intended to make family searches more actionable and regionally relevant; DCYF and partners invited providers to contact the Child Care Finder support inbox for help and to use local coaches for onboarding.
