Message from the Director 

Welcome to the Child Care Resource Service (CCRS). We have developed this site to support you as parents, providers, and community members. If you need assistance with anything related to child care, please feel free to call our office at 333-3252 or 1-800-325-5516.

CCRS is funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) and is located on the University of Illinois campus.  We are part of the Department of Human and Community Development in Bevier Hall.  CCRS serves six counties including Champaign, Douglas, Iroquois, Macon, Piatt, and Vermilion.  We employee just over 30 staff in several departments including Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), Parent Counseling, training, Outreach, Resource Development, Research and administration.  In addition, we have several students and hourly employees.  Our overarching goals are to promote quality child care for children and families and to provide excellent training and support for child care professionals. Our services include assisting parents and providers with the processing of CCAP paperwork, helping parents locate and understand child care options, guiding providers through a quality rating process, setting up and delivering trainings and workshops, reaching out to the community, and working with providers and parents on health care related topics.  IDHS recently has funded an Infant Toddler program where we will work more closely with infant and toddler caregivers to ensure quality and capacity of these programs. 

We strive to keep you up to date with current issues around children and child care.  Three times a year we distribute a training calendar / newsletter to providers.  It is filled with training opportunities and helpful timely tidbits for providers and parents.  We also have an email update list.  If you’d like to join that list, please send us your email address.

For parents looking for child care, we have listings of both licensed family child care homes and centers.  We counsel parents on the options available to them and then provide parents with a list of referrals.  We do not recommend one provider over another but assist the parent in looking for the best option for their particular family needs. 

The CCAP staff processes the paperwork to help qualified lower income parents pay for their child care.  They are available for questions and assistance.  Our new phone system allows parents to speak directly to the person handling their case.

Yearly, at CCRS we develop an annual report with data from the previous fiscal year.  This includes average costs for child care, percentage of the types of child care being used by CCAP parents, the number and types of trainings child care providers attend, where parents are calling us from, and the types and capacity of programs in our area. This report is available upon request.

We at CCRS feel it’s vitally important that we continue to let parents, providers, community members, and legislatures know about the important work of child care and how parents need affordable child care options.  If this work is important to you, we ask that you continue to contact your legislator and let them know.  To find out whom your specific legislator is go to www.actforchildren.org