The vendor is required to provide that Management and operation of child care services (CCS) for low-income families, promoting long-term self-sufficiency by enabling parents to work and/or attend workforce training or education activities.
- It is the board’s intent to contract with an entity that will strive to:
• He board’s intent to contract with an entity that will strive to:
• Provide efficient and effective management and operation of ccs
• Provide quality customer services
• Meet or exceed performance expectations
• Maximize all available resources
• Minimize operational costs
• Improve the quality, availability, and affordability of childcare in the development
- Texas determines the allocation for child care services (CCS) based on federal appropriations, local needs, and in coordination with workforce solutions alamo (WSA), the local workforce development board, to implement the program
- CCS provides child care scholarships to eligible families. in fiscal year 2024, the ccs program served a daily average of over 12,000 children with over 4,000 children on a waitlist to receive childcare scholarships through over 600 alamo area ccs providers.
- The Texas strategic plan of removing barriers to employment for skilled and educated workers with a desire to reenter the workforce.
- CCS program empowers working parent/guardian to choose care that best suits their family's needs, provide information to help parent/guardian make informed choices about ccs, promotes involvement by parent/guardian and family members, supports parent/guardian trying to achieve independence from public assistance; and helps increase the percentage of low-income children in high-quality child care settings through the state rising star (TRS) program.
- The child care contractor will work with the child care quality contractor to implement the apprenticeship and shared services co-op.
- Career centers:
• CCS clients may utilize the career centers in county and the 12 surrounding counties for faxing, scanning, and emailing documentation.
• Clients may reach contractor staff by utilizing phones in the career center resource labs.
• During times of open enrollment, ccs staff may utilize the career centers as temporary rotating offices in which to serve rural customers.
• These rural visits will be scheduled beforehand, coordinated with local career center management, and marketed to the public through state marketing department.
• Contractor will participate in resource fairs, job fairs, and employer meetings throughout the region to provide child care outreach and/or information
• Contractor engages in planning and execution of enhancements through the rural services pilot and the workforce integration project.
- Child care providers:
• CCS clients may receive direct care services at one of the CCS provider’s locations within department.
- Work requirements:
1. Call center: Routing calls coming into the web-based call center, cisco finesse, is through a phone menu tree; callers have the options for messages in Spanish or english, and provide the caller the opportunity to choose from the following:
• Wait list
• Intake
2. Report on changes and transfers
• Redeterminations
• Questions concerning the child care attendance
• Questions concerning appeals
• Questions concerning recoupments
• Provider services
• state rising star
- Data:
• Average children per day performance percentage
• Initial job search participants
• Initial job search success rate percentage
• Public prekindergarten and head start/early head start partnership data
• Work hours for single and dual parent households
• Activity interruptions/3-month job search
• Children of families experiencing homelessness - Provider services:
• As of February 1, 2025, there are a total of 589 child care providers (military, licensed centers, and licensed and registered homes) within the department, 305 of which are designated providers.
• Additionally, workforce also has agreements with 13 relative providers.
• CCS provider staff ensures policies and procedures outlined in provider agreements are adhered to, technical assistance (ta) is provided as needed, and corrective action is pursued when necessary.
• Providers are responsible for collecting parent share of cost (PSOC) for families.
• Providers are also responsible for timely reporting to the contractor when parents fail to pay their PSOC.
• CCS provider staff is also responsible for annually collecting published rates from providers and calculating and entering rates and agreements into state child care connection (tx3c).
• Contractor will participate in the procurement, management, and tracking of child care provider contract agreements, also known as contracted slots.
• Contractor will maintain a list of active public prekindergarten and head start/early head start partnerships.
• Data will be shared with workforce on the number of public prekindergarten and head start/early head start partnerships and the number direct referrals that were authorized during the month
- Client services:
• To be eligible, all at-risk parent(s)/guardian(s) are required to participate in a combination of training, education, or employment activities for an average of 25-hours per week for a single parent/guardian family or an average of 50-hours per week for a two (2) parent/guardian family.
• Each credit hour of postsecondary education counts as three (3) hours of education activity per week; and
• Each credit hour of a condensed postsecondary education course counts as six (6) education activity hours per week
• Family income exceeds 85 percent of state median income (SMI), taking into consideration irregular fluctuations in income
• Three months of continuing care has been provided to a family in which the parents have experienced a non-temporary cessation in work, education, or training and have not resumed work, education, or training within the three months
• Three months of initial care was provided to a family experiencing homelessness, but eligibility could not be verified by the end of the three months
• Eligibility was determined based on fraud
• An out-of-state move
• Failure to pay the parent share of cost (intentional program violation)
• Accruing excessive unexplained absences (more than 40)
• Failure to meet activity requirements during the initial three-month job search period.
- Priority groups:
• Choices
• Temporary assistance for needy families (TANF) applicants
• Children of parent/guardian eligible for supplemental nutrition assistance program employment and training (snap E&T)
• At-risk child care for former choice’s child care recipients whose TANF benefits were denied or voluntarily ended within the last 12 months due to employment, timing out of benefits, or an earnings increase
• Child protective services
• Children of a qualified veteran or spouse
• Children of youth in foster care
• Children experiencing homelessness
• Children of deployed military parents are unable to enroll on military funded child care assistance
programs
• Children of teen parents
• Children with disabilities
- The third priority group includes the following as adopted by workforce:
• Children in rural counties will be a local priority until at least the relative allocation percentage
provided by workforce based on the rural services pilot county-by-county of children receiving
• discretionary funded child care scholarships do so from the rural counties.
all workforce priority
• groups have been served, customers from rural counties will have priority until the percentage of
rural children in discretionary care are met.
• Opportunity participants
• Siblings of a child already receiving care
• Families enrolled in early head start child care partnerships
• JBSA military members, civilians, and associated contractors.
• Children dually enrolled in a recognized partnership site. - Goals:
• Recruit new rural ccs providers
• Maintain communications with current ccs providers
• Inform potential customers of ccs services
• Broadcast user-friendly channels of communication for rural customers
- Tactics:
• Focus on child-serving and family assistance organizations, low-income establishments, community service agencies, and employment agencies
• Characterize our customer demographics
- Priorities for outreach and communication:
• Target numbers
• Increase number of providers through service and perceived value
• Customer retention
• Dedicated ccs rural staff
- Strategic exploration of partnerships including, but not limited to, the following:
• Child care providers and child care regulations
• School district social workers and teen coordinators
• Employment agencies
• Family services
• commission offices
• SA food Bank
• Local colleges and universities
- Visibility:
• Roadshows
• Flyers, posters and/or brochures
• Low-income establishments
• Employment agencies
• Family services
• Commission offices/WIC
• Workforce centers
• Job and health fairs
• Technology
• Employ email strategically - annual provider agreements, reminder re: school age care, distribution of waitlist applications and intake packets to providers
• Online fillable forms
• Workforce provider map
• Fax/scan/e-mail capabilities from american job center locations
• Contractor shall perform outreach for underserved areas and geographic areas.
• Contractor shall engage with workforce staff in the planning and execution of outreach enhancements through the rural services pilot.
• Contractor shall purchase workforce board-approved branded shirts to utilize at events.0
- Contract Period/Term: 1 year
- Pre-Proposal Pre-Submittal Conference Date: March 05, 2025,
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: March 06, 2025