California's Child Care Portal
California Child Care Resource & Referral Network
The California Child Care Resource & Referral Network (The Network) engaged CauseLabs to create a child care website. As a non-profit organization, The Network aims to establish strong connections between parents and reliable childcare providers while offering essential resources.
**Challenge**
In California, parents lack a central source for trustworthy child care services. Childcare information is scattered across various local websites and private platforms, each with its own criteria and details. Often, this information is incomplete, outdated, or difficult for parents to access when looking for local care options. To tackle this problem, The Network compiled a comprehensive database containing valuable information about childcare providers statewide. With this resource, they can offer Californian residents up-to-date and relevant child care information.
**Solution**
The outcome of this initiative is a child care website, accessible at mychildcareplan.org, designed for the citizens of California. This project is the result of collaboration among The Network, the California Department of Education, the California Department of Social Services, various Resource & Referral offices in the state, a selection of childcare providers, and feedback from parents. We have consistently improved the user experience, focusing on transparency and ensuring support for scalability. Managing a project of such statewide significance involves a complex interplay of factors and numerous stakeholders. Consequently, we adopted a human-centered approach from the start, dedicating several months to strategy and design to gather input from as many participants as possible. This process allowed us to create a website that truly resonates with its users, encouraging engagement and promoting growth.