Best Practice Portfolio

This Portfolio showcases best practice projects (e.g. initiatives, models, programs, strategies, etc.) that center child care as a key driver of economic mobility throughout California’s Central Coast. It features real solutions that promote collective impact, with the goal of opening doors to new partnerships, expanding influence, and improving the economy. 

The Portfolio aims to inspire and activate:

• Learning and collaboration by aligning efforts

• Scaling and replication by making successful models easier to identify and adopt

• Advocacy by demonstrating what is possible when child care is regarded as an essential economic infrastructure

This unprecedented cross-county, cross-sector Portfolio aims to be a platform that benefits agencies, community members, businesses, funders, government, and policymakers.

Projects that centralize child care as an economic mobility align with at least one of the following focus areas are well suited for the Portfolio:

• CHILD CARE WORKFORCE - Projects that recruit, train, support, compensate, and aim to retain a diverse and well-compensated child care workforce (especially women, immigrants, and BIPOC) through education, mentorship, business support, and/or career pathways in order to strengthen economic resilience for families, child care businesses, and the community.

• CHILD CARE FACILITIES - Projects that expand and improve the physical space for child care through startup funding, land use/housing/zoning, permitting reform, technical assistance, shared services, and/or innovative facility models in an effort to increase access to child care facilities and capacity, and to support working families, child care workers, and the community.

• EMPLOYER-SUPPORTED CHILD CARE - Employer efforts to improve access to child care through on-site or near-site care, financial support, family-friendly policies, business partnerships, and/or technical assistance to increase workforce participation and promote economic mobility for workers, businesses, the child care field, and the community.

• RESOURCES FOR FAMILIES - Projects that support centralized, accessible child care information and referral services that are enhanced with culturally informed outreach and support in order to help families, especially those in underserved communities, navigate options, access affordable care, and strengthen the economy by increasing workforce participation.

• COMMUNITY INVESTMENT - Projects that build community engagement and investment of public, private, and/or community-driven efforts to prioritize child care through funding, policy, public awareness building, and/or integration into broader planning and development strategies that support working families, grow local economies, and promote equitable development.

Inclusion in the Portfolio is a way to:

• Elevate innovative work that deserves a broader platform

• Inspire other communities with solutions that are already making a difference

• Attract new partnerships, funding, or support by showcasing results

• Contribute to a growing movement that sees child care as essential infrastructure

• Support policy change by showing what’s possible on the ground

• Start with the Self-Assessment

• Whether your work is in the early stages of development or proven with evidence, based in a single neighborhood or spans multiple counties, if it’s positioning child care as an economic mobility strategy it could be a strong fit for the Portfolio.

• Find out by completing the self assessment guide. The assessment form will not be collected. However, if the project is deemed a good fit then the responses to the self assessment guide can be used to complete the Portfolio Submission Form.

• Nominate a Best Practice Project

• If you know of a best practice project that’s driving real impact, we invite you to nominate it for inclusion in the Portfolio by filling out this form.