- Welcome to "Inland Edition," where this season we're having conversations with people who represent nonprofit organizations working to make the Inland Empire a better place.

My name is Joe Richardson.

I'm a local attorney, Inland Empire resident, and your host.

And today, we're going to chat [light background music] with James Moses, regional director of the Child Care Resource Center.

CCRC has been serving children, families, and childcare providers since 1976.

The organization assists with issues like finding and selecting childcare, and childcare financial assistance for families.

In CCRC, James Moses found an organization that aligned with his values and he has spent the better part of three decades forging relationships with families, lawmakers, and community leaders.

He specializes in building relationships with legislators, specifically to help find eligible families and provide them with services and support.

He firmly believes families, children, and caregivers are cornerstone of our community.

Let's meet him, and learn more about how the Child Care Resource Center affects our community on a daily basis.

[soft piano music] ♪ [gentle upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Joe] So, we're happy to welcome from the Child Care Resource Center, the regional director, James Moses.

How are you, sir?

- I'm great.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here with you.

- Great.

Now, so can I take from your jacket that we can call it CCRC?

- Yeah.

CCRC is the acronym and we're known by many folks as CCRC.

- Now, how long has the CCRC been there?

- So, CCRC's been in existence for nearly 50 years.

So, it started with a group of women who were doing some volunteer work in LA County back in 1974, but initially kind of formally founded in 1975 and then funded in 1976.

And so, they've been working in LA County since then, but we moved into San Bernardino County back in 2013.

- Oh, wow.

So, talk about the mission.

What does CCRC do?

- So, our mission is to cultivate child, family, and community well-being.

And, we do that throughout-- with a lot of collaboration and partnership with a lot of entities.

A core area of our services is around serving children and families, helping them pay for childcare, and providing subsidies.

We also provide a great deal of support to childcare providers, training, coaching, mentoring.

So, that started out as our core services.

And, over time we expanded a great deal as we've seen that families needed much more than we were offering just through childcare.

So then, we began to expand; look at what the needs of the communities were.

So, it looks a little bit different in each community, 'cause each community's different, but we're always striving to see in partnership, what kind of things can we do in specific communities to really meet the needs of that community and the children and families, in particular.

- Right.

Tell us about your specific function as regional director.

- So, my role as regional director; I work in our government relations department, which is part of our Office of Strategic Engagement.

So, my role is to especially build relationships here in San Bernardino County with our local, state, and federal elected officials; to share with them what the needs of our community are, what kind of work we, along with partners are doing in the areas of childcare, child well-being; to ensure that they understand, one, what the needs are, what CCRC as well as partners are capable of doing, if we had adequate funding to provide services to children and families.

So, a lot of relationship building in that area.

And then, also strategically looking at how can we develop partnerships, how do we draw down additional funding that allow us to better serve children and families?

And, sometimes we can do that ourselves, but often we need collaborations and partnerships with other organizations to make sure that we really maximize the opportunities we have to serve children and families.

- How did you-?

Your own process.

Give us some information about your background and how, was there an "aha moment" for you in terms of being in nonprofit leadership?

Had you done this for a while?

You know, those types of things.

How did you come across being at CCRC?

- Prior to CCRC, I'd spent 24 years in local government work.

So, I worked for the County of San Bernardino for about 17 years in one of their departments and started at the ground level and worked up into a program manager role there.

And then, I went to work for the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools.

I worked there for about seven years.

And-?

(pauses) We went through some challenges within the organizations.

You know, nothing bad, but challenges that had me really seeking and thinking about something different.

And, I think the opportunity to connect with CCRC came about when CCRC had an opportunity to take over many of the childcare programs in San Bernardino County.

So, I became connected with our current president as well as a former vice president.

Got to know them.

Really, we were well aligned in terms of how we wanted to serve people.

I think our personal missions and visions for how we wanted to live and how we wanted to serve matched what the organization was doing.

And, it just felt like an incredible opportunity for me to maybe shift from local government work and come to work in a nonprofit.

At the time, we were considerably smaller and so the thought of being more nimble, and I think we still are more nimble.

- Right.

- Certainly, but as we've grown, that becomes a little more complex- - Right, right.

- certainly.

But, the opportunity to work in a little bit smaller environment- - [Joe] Right.

- Be a little bit more nimble.

Really, (pauses) have that mission be really so customer- and family-focused was enticing for me.

- Tell us about some of the specific programs that you're really proud of.

- So, you know, proud of all the programs we run and we run a great deal of programs.

So, I mentioned earlier at the core, we provide childcare, financial assistance to families.

So, the bulk of our funding, probably around 60% of our funding is to fund childcare financial assistance.

And then, in conjunction with that, we do a lot of work through a department we call "resource and referral," where we help families find childcare providers.

So, we help them understand the different types of childcare providers, what might be the best fit for their family and their child based on their needs.

And, we make the connection with them about the resources that are available to them.

You know, I mentioned that over time, we realized that the financial assistance and working with providers, as great as that is, that families needed more.

And so, over time we began to look at other ways we might help those families.

And so, we began to develop programs or, you know, home visitation programs and we offer parent engagement, parent training programs.

We have programs that are focused on the child.

A lot of "story times" and literacy programs.

More recently, you know?

And COVID, I think shined a light on this a little bit, but we saw that more and more children and families had kind of, you know, issues.

Not issues, but needed more help, you know, related to mental health.

With COVID, we had isolation issues.

- Sure.

- And so, shortly before COVID, we began to-- We created a department for family well-being where we started to look at how we serve families in a greater way.

So, recently we just earned a grant through the Office of Child Abuse Prevention, where we'll be serving pregnant or parenting moms who have a history of substance abuse.

So, we'll help them navigate services to ensure that if they're pregnant moms, their babies are born healthy and well, that if they need additional services to solidify their family and to benefit their family, then we're gonna make those connections and we're gonna provide navigation to those resources.

So, we saw expansion in that area.

We've seen our early childhood education, our childcare workforce need a lot of support and we've always supported the workforce.

But, as we've grown, we've built out a new workforce development department that's focused specifically on workforce development around early childhood and childcare, also around home visitation.

We look at a lot of those things.

In our Family Well-being Department that I mentioned, we have developed and partnered with Loma Linda here in San Bernardino County with Loma Linda and First 5 San Bernardino to offer developmental screenings for children in our program.

So, one of the things we're finding is many young children aren't screened for developmental screenings.

And so, often if they have developmental delays, they're not identified, and we're not connecting them to additional resources to help them at the youngest ages where we can have the greatest impact.

So, we began to look at different ways we can expand to better serve families.

And, those are-- You know, that's not everything, but those are a few things that we've been doing.

- When I was in high school, I used to have a English teacher who, for every story, she said, there's a dramatic irony.

Seems like this; some aspect?

But, it's actually this way.

So, here's a dramatic irony that I wanna talk about.

The notion that you would get the impression looking through the window at CCRC and its imprint and its size, that you have everything that ideally you would need.

And, that on a larger standpoint, from a macro standpoint, that the Inland Empire has all the resources that it needs, given its growth, given its diversity, given how spread out it is.

But that's not really the case, is it?

- No, it's not.

You know, I am more familiar with the needs of San Bernardino County, but often the needs in San Bernardino and Riverside County are similar.

There's a lot of similarities.

And, we've been underserved in the Inland Empire here for a long time.

- Right.

- And so, even though we are a fairly large organization, you know, the reach?

It's just not there.

You know, we-?

I think earlier, I said we serve about 75,000 kids, and families each month.

So, in San Bernardino County, when you look at the zero to 13 population of kids, we have somewhere between 400,00 and 500,000 kids; probably 200,000 or more have all parents in the home working.

And, we are only serving and helping about 30,000 of those families with childcare.

So, you can see that-- A term that's used in our field a lot is a "childcare desert."

So, a childcare desert is an area that has more than three kids for every childcare space that we have.

In San Bernardino County, we are closer to 11 or 12 children- - Wow.

- for every childcare space.

That's 11 or 12 children who we know need childcare services.

So, we're terribly underserved in that way.

And, you know, recently we worked with the departments at the state level to change how they approach funding our programs.

You know, largely the Inland Empire wasn't getting really a fair share of the funding when you think about how underserved we were.

- Yep.

- And so, through advocacy work that funding mechanism was changed and that really benefited Riverside and San Bernardino counties over the last few years where we've seen a greater share of funding for childcare financial assistance and subsidies.

- Tell us about, and I think we've led into it pretty well.

What are some of the biggest challenges that you face on a day-to-day basis at your organization?

- I think some of the big challenges we face as an organization and some of these are specific to us, but some are, you know, specific to the field and how we're gonna serve children and families.

So, I think one is the childcare providers.

We've done a lot of work to increase reimbursement rates for childcare providers.

That's been a good thing.

But, that hasn't equated to increased wages - Mm hm.

- in a lot of spaces.

So, the wages that early childhood childcare staff are paid is a challenge for our field as a whole.

We have a huge teacher shortage right now.

So, we're struggling to bring teachers into the field.

And, the competitive wages?

You know, many of our programs are paying wages that are similar to what an adult could go get at a fast food, you know, the Amazon warehouses, those type of warehouses.

And, of course, we've seen an increase in wages for fast food.

Also an increase in wages for folks in the medical field, which, you know, we wouldn't say that that's not worthy.

Those are worthy things.

It does create a little bit of a challenge for our field.

For CCRC, I think challenges is-- Some of the challenges we're facing is just trying to draw down new and additional fundings to allow us to provide some services where we see gaps in services for families.

So, a lot of that is serving the whole child, the whole family.

So, it's around those mental health issues.

It's around workforce issues, home visiting, really helping-- coming into families' homes where they invite that and really helping them understand about the development of their child and what kind of things they can do in the home to benefit that.

Kinda helping them become their child's "first teacher," if you will.

So, we see gaps in some of those areas.

And, we're working with a lot of partners here in San Bernardino County specifically to look at how we bring more home visiting funding, how we bring more mental health, especially early childhood mental health funding into the county to serve children and families.

- I'm sure that what you do is not easy, but it's sounds like a-?

A purpose and a mission that's very easy to be married to.

So, tell me about-- Give me a success story or two that kind of reminds you in a tough moment why you do what you do.

- You know, I think there are several.

Sometimes because my role shifted and I'm not engaged day to day with the families, it's changed.

But, I still get to see families on a weekly basis.

And, I get to hear their stories of how the childcare-- They just recently got into childcare and the fact that we're able to pay for the childcare for their two kids- - That's huge.

- What that's doing in terms of putting better and higher quality food on the table, allowing them to spend money on clothing and other necessity items.

So, those things keep you motivated.

I think on the advocacy/policy side, we've been working with legislators and our San Bernardino County legislators have been key to this.

It started several years ago with Senator Connie Leyva.

It's now Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes; took it on last year along with Senator Monique Limón.

But, we've increased childcare reimbursement rates a great deal over the last four or five years.

So, we're finally getting to a place where folks are understanding the cost of quality care- - Yeah.

- And, how much money and how much of an investment that's gonna be.

So, I think that's a win that was beneficial.

That while we still need to bring in new providers, the hope is that by starting to understand the value they bring to the table for starting to compensate them from a program level at a rate that allows them to provide quality care, we're hopeful that more and more providers will remain in the field and continue providing those services.

So, that's been a big win.

Along with those reimbursement rates, you talked earlier about how expensive childcare is, right?

So, parents have what we call family fees that they have to pay and based on their income, they could have a small family fee.

California just recently really took a huge step in this area to reduce the family fees.

- Oh, yeah.

- So, families on our programs that are receiving financial assistance now don't have to pay more than 1% of their income.

- Wow.

- Towards family fees.

- That's huge.

- So, the federal requirement or recommendation is no more than 7%.

So, California's really taken a leap there, over and above.

And, a lot of that was because of our local legislators and the advocates here locally that helped do that.

So, we're proud of that work that's moving things forward.

And, you know, every year we're looking at partnerships with our legislators to look at what kind of things can we do to make things better in our communities.

And, you know, we're blessed that we have legislators who care about the work we're doing here.

And, we have a lot of wonderful advocates and organizations that are trying to look at how we improve to maximize what we provide for children and families in our communities.

- And, speaking of folks that are in line and receive wonderful services and that help to give those services at your organization, let's hear from both a caregiver, as well as a parent receiving services.

[light upbeat music] ♪ - So, my name is Beatriz and I have three children, Eliana, Liam, and Gianna.

We're here for the playgroup.

So, the kids can have fun with other kids and learn.

They love-- They say, "Oh, we're gonna go see our friends."

And, they love to learn.

They love to sing and dance.

I think that's the part that they love the most, dancing.

And, my kids love to draw and paint.

I'm homeschooling my kids.

And so, it allows them to socialize with other children and just have fun, and-- Yeah, because they don't have that opportunity to go to school.

I mean, they do have the opportunity, but I choose to homeschool and it allows them to see the same people frequently and get to know them.

'Cause, we see them for four weeks straight and sometimes a lot of those family come back.

- [Eliana] I love my family!

- My name is Celia Toman.

I have four kids.

I have been with CCRC for about eight years.

My oldest was two.

She's now 10.

But, since then I've had three more!

(Celia laughs) I'm at home all day with kids.

I'm overwhelmed.

I'm overstimulated.

Sometimes, I need to talk to other adults or just to-?

Or sometimes like, you know, with parents, we're still trying to navigate just parenthood.

So, there's a parent cafe that I come to and it was a lot of networking, I would say.

Yeah.

So, we enjoyed it and they gave us a lot of resources.

So, a lot of resources.

I actually did-- When I started it was childcare.

I came for my childcare licensing.

When I had my oldest, I was working.

I was working, but I wanted to stay home.

But I wanted to find something that I could do at home, like, to bring income.

And, that's where childcare came in.

And, when I looked it up, it was saying, you know, Child Care Resource Center.

And then, when I called, I came in, and I actually took some classes.

And, it was nice!

They were taking care of the kids while we were being taken care of.

My list of what people watching my kids is very tiny.

So, when we came here, what I'm looking for and what they-?

The boxes that they met was that they're very attentive.

They always had an activity for the kids.

They did a book.

My kindergartner, we didn't even do books yet, but she was so excited to share with me of a story she did.

And, the ladies were actually able to help her.

You know, help her write it out.

Like, write it for her?

And, she just drew the pictures.

I would ask, "How was the style?

How was the lady, were they helpful?"

And, they said, "Oh, she was so nice.

"She was asking me about, you know, my favorite--" They love Pokemon.

"My favorite Pokemon.

And, she told me her favorite Pokemon."

So, I think it was-?

I enjoyed it, that I enjoyed it because my kids were happy.

So, it made me happy.

- My name is Cassandra Ward.

I've been here for five years and I'm a child development specialist.

One, I get to work with the families, young children, providers, and just the community events.

So, it's a little bit of everything that I enjoy doing.

One of the biggest things I learned in school while studying childhood development is that the family, the home life, plays a big role in the life of the child.

It's not just the child, because they're only in your custody.

They're only with you for a certain amount of hours of the day, but they go back to their family.

So, if we can focus from the whole family and get the whole family the help and support they need, that's ultimately gonna help the child the greatest.

We have parent cafes where it's not a class, but it's parents coming out with other parents and families learning from each other.

We have facilitators that are experts on the matter, but they're there more to lead the conversation rather than teach.

And, that's one of our most popular things.

We have a lot of families that return to that often.

We also have what we call playgroups where the family, the provider, the parent, the grandparent, the nanny, whoever it is that has the child, they come out and we teach them child development with play.

So, the kids come.

They have story, crafts, we get down on the ground and play with them.

But, it's more of a-?

You're with the kids instead of the kids just playing by themselves and you're watching.

You're interacting with them.

You're helping them learn, share.

All that is hands-on with them rather than just the kids by themselves.

And then, we have a lot of distributions with diapers, supplies and the things that parents and providers could need.

And for anything else, you can call in.

And, if we don't have it, we'll get you in contact with the person or the organization that does.

Our drive up distribution, started with, like, diapers, PPE supplies, and those type of things.

And, always some type of bag of fruit or vegetables.

It could be a variety of different things.

You just register and then come during your time, pop your trunk, and we give you all the free stuff.

In my position, we get to make a lot of phone calls and talk to a lot of people, which means we engage with a lot of people that we have helped.

And, we get a lot of phone calls from people that need help.

And, being that person on the other end of the phone that's able to have the answer, have the solution, be able to get them to the right person that they need, be able to fill that request, then and there, that's, like, gonna-?

It does something on the inside to you.

I love being the person that gets to help families in need.

[light upbeat music] ♪ - [Joe] So, give us some homework.

How do people follow up and find out more about your organization?

- So, I think probably the two easiest ways, the first would be go to the website, which is www.ccrcca.org So, the website?

You know, everything we've talked about, they can find information about all the programs we've talked about here.

For those that are less likely to go to a website, they could call us and share what their needs are and we'll get them referred.

And, that phone number is 1-866-674-KIDS.

- Oh, wow.

- So, they can reach us either way.

And, kind of the goal for us is to create as many linkages and connections to the community as possible so that they can get connected to us in whatever way makes the most sense for them.

- Yeah.

- So, some of them go to the website; they put in applications electronically.

But some prefer, you know, personal help with that.

They want to come into the office.

They want someone to walk them through.

And so, our goal is to try to meet the children and the families where they are, provide them what they need to be as successful as they can be.

- So, James Moses, regional director of CCRC, thank you so, so much for being on "Inland Edition."

- Well, thank you.

I appreciate being here.

Appreciate the opportunity to share the wonderful work our team's doing and look forward to ways that we can benefit the children and families in our community.

So, thank you.

- Once again, another wonderful organization in the Inland Empire doing great work.

Make sure you watch episodes on YouTube that you haven't seen.

Let everyone else know.

And, let's continue highlighting [light background music] people that are doing wonderful things for our Inland Empire area.

And, we'll do it one conversation at a time.

Until then, Joe Richardson at "Inland Edition", signing off.

[uplifting music and vocals] ♪ [softer music/vocals] ♪ ♪ ♪ [music fades]