Research & Evaluation

For over 50 years, California’s Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) system has been foundational in serving families and child care providers in every zip code in 58 counties across the state. These community-based agencies provide comprehensive, coordinated, and cost-effective child care and development services for hundreds of thousands of children from infancy to 13 years of age, parents, and caregivers.

In 2019, the Burbank YMCA convened the Burbank Infant Group to respond to community feedback about a lack of licensed infant care in Burbank. The Burbank YMCA and Child Care Resource Center partnered to study available data which revealed that Burbank has considerably more children than licensed child care spaces. In 2022, CCRC received grant funding to conduct a Burbank child care needs assessment in partnership with the Burbank YMCA. The needs assessment confirmed what we knew about licensed child care spaces but revealed much more.

The Burbank child care needs assessment provides an overview of the current child care preferences of Burbank families and those who work in the Burbank community. Our study finds that Burbank not only needs more spaces for child care, but there is also a need for different types of child care such as programs that better suit a working families’ eight-hour work-day schedule or additional services for children with special needs. To address the needs of families working or living in Burbank, we have composed a list of recommendations based on the findings of this community assessment.

Working class families across the nation struggle to find affordable child care for their children. Fifty-one percent of Americans live in child care deserts and the share of the population living in a child care desert ranges from 22 to 77 percent across the nation.