The Cosumnes River College (CRC) Child Development Center (CDC) provides high-quality care service and development experiences for children ages three through 11 years while their parents are attending college classes or working.

The Child Development Center is a program that is state-funded by California’s Department of Education and Child Development Divisions, that provides early childhood learning to children whose guardians are employed or attending CRC classes.

“The supervisor and teachers at the Child Development Center (CDC) are communicating with families via phone, email, text, Zoom and shared apps to stay connected with children and provide support for parents and caregivers,” said Child Development Center Supervisor Jennifer Patrick.

Though Covid-19 has caused struggles and changes to many lives, CRC’s Child Development Center was recently awarded by Sacramento County as the top quality service provider among child care and child development services provided in Sacramento County.

“The recognition we received was part of Raising Quality Together (RQT) which is the quality rating and improvement system for child development programs in Sacramento County,” said Patrick. “We earned a Tier 5 rating which is the highest rating possible.”

While hosting virtual meetings with children and guardians that involve storytimes, the staff of CRC’s Child Development Center are continuously providing Los-Rios families with needed resources that include food services, health and safety to online educational resources for academic learning while children are aging and growing. Child Development Center’s virtual meetings are held online at a frequency rate of twice per week, also known as a bi-weekly schedule.

Sacramento County uses a quality rating system called Raising Quality Together (RQT) to look for ways of improving and rating early childhood learning and care services that are provided by multiple institutions in the county. 

According to the article “Raising Quality Together: Sacramento County’s Quality Rating and Improvement System,” listed under programs of Sacramento County Office of Education Early Learning webpage, it mentions that the primary focus of the RQT is to help guardians understand how their child can learn and grow best based on each individual child learning differently. Another priority focus of RQT is to provide staff and their learning programs with the correct resources and tools to continue providing top-quality care and learning services to children and parents.

With schools and businesses always having an emergency plan in place ready to go, the Child Development Center is responding appropriately to help families and children during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are staying in frequent communication with college and district executive management,” said Patrick. “Our plan is to re-open the center to serve families, children and students for the fall semester or as soon as it is determined safe.”