County of Los Angeles - Chief Executive Office

Office of Child Care

OFFICE OF CHILD CARE
Office of Child Care, within the Service Integration Branch
of the Chief Executive Office
222 South Hill Street, 5th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 974-4103 Phone / (213) 217-5106 Fax

What’s New…

The LA Children’s Data Network is delighted to announce the release of Shrinking Investments Yield Smaller Returns - Mapping the Loss of Early Childhood Education Investment and Infrastructure in LA County During the 2008-2011 Great Recession. The maps in this report provide a concrete view of where and how our state has chosen to invest—and divest—in its children, its working families and its workforce, and how it might re-deploy those resources in the future.
The Child Care Planning Committee (Planning Committee) is pleased to announce the release of The Los Angeles County Child Care and Development Needs Assessment 2011. The “Needs Assessment” was conducted in partnership with the Los Angeles County Early Care and Education Data Collaboration whose members are the (Planning Committee) through the Office of Child Care, Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) Head Start/State Preschool, and Los Angeles Universal Preschool (LAUP). It is an analysis of the need compared to the availability for child care and development services throughout Los Angeles County, including subsidized services, and offers a set of recommendations based on the findings.
The Child Care Planning Committee (Planning Committee) is now recruiting members for 2012-13. Click on Planning Committee Membership Application for more information and to access the application.
The Steps to Excellence Project (STEP), administered by the Los Angeles County Office of Child Care, was launched in 2007 by the Policy Roundtable for Child Care (Roundtable) as a quality rating and support system to: provide parents with clear and concise information on the quality of child care and development centers and family child care homes; distinguish programs that meet higher program standards; create incentives for programs to achieve and maintain higher quality program standards; and provide benchmarks to determine if the quality of individual programs and communities is improving over time. The Office of Child Care and Roundtable are pleased to release the Steps to Excellence Project Pilot Process Evaluation, which closely examines participant experiences in the pilot phase of STEP.

The Office of Child Care has developed an array of materials designed to help families in their search for child care and development services, including information on accessing subsidized child care and development services for income eligible parents. Click on Navigating Child Care & Development System and Subsidy Programs to download and read the materials.

The Office of Child Care supports policy recommendation formulation, planning, and implementation efforts of the County of Los Angeles Policy Roundtable for Child Care and the Child Care Planning Committee to improve the availability, quality, and access to child care in the County of Los Angeles. Specific activities include recommending how proposed policies, plans, and procedures of public, private, and non-profit entities contribute to child care quality, supply, and/or accessibility; researching child care issues and legislation to formulate policy recommendations to the County Board of Supervisors; conducting periodic countywide child care needs assessments; and developing countywide plans to address identified needs.

The Office also assists County departments in developing employee child care services and is responsible for implementation of the following special projects:

Investing in Early Educators Program: provides cash stipends to qualified early educators in an effort to boost their retention and help them work towards a degree in child development or a closely related field.
Steps to Excellence Project (STEP): a quality rating and improvement system for licensed child care programs serving children ages 0-5.
Child Care Policy Framework 2011 - 13: A framework for coordinating efforts among County Departments and community stakeholders to ensure that children and families have access to high quality early care and education programs, ultimately contributing to promoting healthy children, strong families and vibrant communities.