Budget Cut Leads to Nonprofit Restructuring

St. Louis, Mo., June 28, 2010 – The Missouri Child Care Resource & Referral Network (MOCCRRN) announced today that it will restructure its regional service delivery in the wake of $750,000 in cuts to its state funding. Effective July 1st, MOCCRRN will consolidate all of its regional service delivery into four agencies, from the eight that have comprised its statewide network. In addition, starting January 1st, the referral service--which assists families in locating child care, early education and after-school programs for their children--will be centralized at the state level.

Support services for early care and education and after-school programs and personnel will continue to be available statewide, but will be delivered regionally by four agencies: The Family Conservancy in Kansas City, MOCCRRN Mid-Missouri in Columbia, Child Day Care Association in St. Louis, and Council of Churches of the Ozarks in Springfield. These services include knowledge and skill-building workshops for members of the early care and education and after-school workforce, on-site technical assistance to elevate the quality of programs above the minimal state licensing standards, and support for facilities seeking to provide for children with special needs.

Sarah Kirschner, MOCCRRN Board Chair said, "Governor Nixon's spending authority restrictions at the beginning of state fiscal year 2010 and his cuts last week to the fiscal year 2011 budget resulted in a total of three-quarters of a million dollars in reductions to our contracts from the Department of Social Services and the Department of Health and Senior Services." In an agency with only $3 million for multiple regionally-delivered programs, a 25 percent cut is too large to absorb with service cutbacks. And these cuts followed more than 10 years without even a cost of living increase, which Ms. Kirschner noted amounts to the same as a loss of about 50 percent of the statewide agency's funding over the past decade. "An innovative re-thinking of our decade-old models for statewide service delivery was the only real solution," she said.

Executive Director Dr. L. Carol Scott added, "The MOCCRRN board, staff and our regional agency directors all recognize that the Governor and General Assembly are working with drastically reduced revenues. No state-funded program can consider itself above the ‘cut line.'" Scott and all the board members were determined that MOCCRRN be nimble and responsive to the changing climate. The four-agency solution was designed to balance the equally-important factors of service quality, statewide coverage, and accountability for the taxpayer dollars that fund these programs. Board chair Kirschner affirmed that, with this model, "Services will continue to be available in all counties in Missouri."

"We all regret the loss of funding to some agencies that were founders and faithful members of the network for 12 years," Scott said, "but the resources are just no longer available for continuing our former model. These changes in no way reflect on the service or skills of our long-time colleagues," Scott continued. "Unfortunate funding realities have forced difficult decisions, and we are confident that our colleagues will continue to be leaders in early childhood care and education," added Kirschner.

Founding organizations of the network for which funding will no longer be provided include the YWCA in St. Joseph, the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, and Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. For more information about MOCCRRN and its programs, see http://www.moccrrn.org/.