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Community Child Care Resources Inc. "Children In Centers" Children's Services Advisory Committee B. PROGRAM NEED STATEMENT (Entire Section B not to exceed one page) • 1 . a) What is the unacceptable condition requiring change? b) Who has the need? c) Where do they live? d) Provide local, state or national trend data, with reference source, that corroborates that this is an area of need. a.) Working families whose incomes are below 200% of poverty cannot break out the dollars for childcare without sacrificing essentials such as food, shelter and clothing . The quality of the care in which a young child spends such a large part of his day is of vital importance to his ability to acquire school readiness skills. This quality care is neither available nor affordable to low-income families unless subsidized in some way. In addition, parents with minimum income, education and/or lack of positive life experiences often face much higher levels of financial and emotional stress creating a barrier to them effectively parenting their children. b .) From Child Care Resource and Referral, present wait lists : Subsidized (School Readiness/Coalition) 336 Redland ' s Christian Migrant 141 Head Start 87 Pre-K Early Intervention 205 Community Child Care Resources 145 Total Wait List (birth-5yrs .) 914 Of those 914 waiting, 380 are infants and toddlers . It is important to remember that Head Start and Pre-K Early Intervention do not provide services for infants/toddlers . C.) The targeted population appears to be spread evenly throughout the county mainland. • d.) While there are 914 children on the combined wait lists, this represents only the people who have called the resource and referral 800#, and does not reflect the total number in this population. Based on current figures from the Indian River School Districts Food Service Program, 51 . 5 % of kindergartner and elementary students are eligible for free or reduced school lunch. The Indian River birth rate has held steady at about 1 , 000 births per year. Free/reduced lunch is based on 185 % of poverty. Therefore we estimate approximately 2 ,575 children 0 — 5 years old would be income eligible for the CCCR program . In addition, there is no realistic way to determine how many additional families fall within the 185 % - 200% poverty level, which would also be eligible for only the CCCR program. We do know that 52% of all babies born in Indian River County are Medicaid eligible, or at the 185 % of poverty. The Children ' s Services Advisory Committee 2002-2005 Community Assessment & Plan lists Indian River County ' s subsidized/assisted pay childcare services ' capacity (infant-preschool) at 489 . According to these statistics, 2,086 children do not have the opportunity for early childhood education. 2. Identify similar programs that are currently serving the needs of your targeted population ; b,) Explain how these existing programs are under-serving the targeted population of your program a.) Head Start, Subsidized Care (ALPI) through the School Readiness Coalition, Redlands Christian Migrant, and Pre-K Early Intervention are similar programs that serve part of the CCCR targeted population. b.) CCCR' s income eligibility cap is 25% higher than those programs ; therefore 25 % of CCCR' s targeted population is not served at all by the other programs . With ALPI, Head Start, Redland' s, Pre-K, and CCCR all at capacity there still remains • a wait list of 914 eligible children ages 0-5 years, documenting that this population is sorely underserved. 5