Childcare Resource and Referral

Among the most important—and stressful—decisions a parent can make is deciding who will care for their child when they cannot. The COVID-19 pandemic has added complexity to this already difficult process due to center closures and staffing shortages. Parents and caregivers not only need safe, qualified, affordable and reliable childcare, but now more than ever they need someone who can help them navigate their options and provide comprehensive information to help them make this choice. The hectic day-to-day pace of parenthood requires fast answers and flexible communication options between themselves and the referral professionals. iCarol provides childcare resource and referral agencies with a system that is easy to use and responsive, with solutions to curate and maintain their database of childcare providers, quickly answer questions and guide community members to care providers through modern communication options.
Resources
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Why use iCarol?

Curate a Database of Childcare Providers
Keeping information about available services up-to-date is a large task that can take hundreds of hours, or more, depending upon the size of your service area and number of available childcare services. iCarol provides many solutions to common data curation challenges experienced by childcare resource and referral centers. With iCarol, updating resource and referral information is quick and easy. You can Read more… | Read less.

Request Updates from Providers
Maintaining hundreds or thousands of resource records for childcare providers is a time-consuming task. Information and Referral standards suggest yearly updates, at a minimum, but we know that in today’s climate information about a provider may change rapidly. It’s your job to keep your records as up-to-date as possible, and with iCarol you can directly engage providers themselves in that process using iCarol’s Read more… | Read less.

Encourage Self-service
Many people prefer to explore services and options online instead of, or before, they talk to a specialist and request referrals. Allowing this self-service helps meet a client where they are and empowers them to consume information in the most comfortable way for them. The downside of self-service is Read more… | Read less.

Flexible Communication Options
Making a phone call is just one way of communicating, and it’s a method that declines in popularity each year. Parents and caregivers want to get information in a way that is quick, easy, and comfortable for them. Contact centers of all kinds are noticing a higher demand from clients to communicate through Live Chat, SMS/Texting, or self-service tools through an organization’s website. iCarol can equip your organization Read more… | Read less.

Track Capacity and Manage Waitlists
The childcare industry has been hit hard by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of workers were furloughed or laid off when child care centers closed, and now that they are reopen just a fraction of workers have returned, having far reaching effects on childcare centers’ capacity, hours of availability, costs, and more. iCarol provides ways for you to Read more… | Read less.
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Hear From Your Peers

Westcoast Child Care Resource Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
“Westcoast Child Care Resource Centre has been using the iCarol database for our child care referrals since 2017. iCarol’s flexibility and versatility allows us to adapt it in different ways to provide clients with exactly the resources they need. Such features like the postal code search works really well for families who live in between neighborhoods. We can search for centres that are within a certain number of kilometers from their location. The ease of calculating the monthly statistics is a huge asset. Generating a report with that information is fast and simple.
During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were required to generate a variety of reports and statistics that were different from our usual reporting. iCarol was so easy to adapt to during that time and then reverse the changes when needed, too, was simple. Reports are generated fast and are reliable. We are pleased that iCarol continues to build upon the features and improve performance.
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– Crystal Janes, Director of Programs

ParentLink
Missouri, USA
“All the iCarol staff have been so helpful and friendly and I really appreciate it. Some companies make you feel dumb for not knowing how to do things or they seem frustrated if you ask too many questions, but I never feel that way with iCarol! So thank you!! We just started using iCarol but already our staff love it because it is so easy to use and intuitive. We are excited about what iCarol can do for us!”
– Christina, Program Coordinator

Family and Children’s Service
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
“iCarol has continuously met and exceeded our expectations both technically and financially. iCarol combines service passion with technical expertise to empower high-impact collaborations between vendor and non-profit. After working with countless other data systems, there are no other vendors which match iCarol in their technical support, responsiveness, innovation, feedback utilization, and staff transition ease when needed. We have over a dozen different programs using iCarol, both helpline and non-helpline, and iCarol is flexible enough to work for all of them.”
– Katherine D., Data Manager

Kids Help Phone
Canada
“Our migration to iCarol was the result of a thorough and rigorous vendor selection process of 11 potential vendors. iCarol excelled with completeness of functionality, technology maturity and affordability. We strongly recommend that any distress or counselling contact centre look closely at iCarol – we doubt you’ll find a better match!”
– Ted K., VP of Information Technology

2-1-1 Norcal
California, USA
“I just want to express gratitude to the iCarol team for providing us with user-friendly features (especially in working with records and data collection for reports) and timely, attentive customer service. Even with the high number of clients you serve, we have always felt valued by you! I also appreciate your openness to new ideas, and your work on delivering new features (such as Folksonomy and PDF’s for PRD searches) in this ever-changing field. Thanks for all you do!”
– Hayley Huttenmaier, Resource Specialist
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