Our Wonderful Story

TLC’s MRCC group pursued and then came along side care.com in the mission to create an online place for families of children with special needs to find safe and accessible child care!

This is the story of TLC’s serendipitous partnership with care.com!

TLC’s MRCC’s is a collaborative group of agencies who meet monthly to address our counties’ special needs community’s ongoing respite needs. Our first 1 ½ years of meetings resulted in a 15 step action plan . TLC had begun recruiting care providers while all MRCC agencies were networking with families. However, neither TLC, nor other MRCC agencies, had the funds or resources to create the type of on-line networking needed for families to access care providers, hence this need became the highest priority of our action plan.

When the members of MRCC stumbled upon care.com our individual reactions echoed sentiments such as “this is a dream come true” website! We had already considered the many challenges of a networking website and care.com appeared to have successfully addressed those same concerns.

At our March ’08 meeting we made reaching out to care.com our number one goal, allowing 3-6 months to connect and/or collaborate with them. That morning each of us accepted assignments to prepare for making a proposal to this Boston, MA based company.

That very afternoon we received an email from the Vice President of care.com requesting a phone consult, in response to TLC’s executive director’s former emails to their founder & CEO.

Within a month we’d had two meetings with the CEO and VP of care.com who flew to S.F. for proposal meetings and our collaboration took off! Care.com was/is an established, online service for people seeking domestic help. They are a for-profit company with a mission philosophy and understood our vision!

Care.com collaborated with TLC to create a ‘vertical’ which caters to the needs of families with special needs. This was an incredible vehicle to carry TLC’s efforts of recruiting care providers and reaching out to families in need. Care.com desired guidance concerning the needs, language and culture of our community. Hence, our partnership was invaluable. After 9 months, lots of information gathering and sifting, web designing and continued teamwork, care.com launched the nation wide, “special needs” services www.care.com/TLC . TLC, MRCC and care.com continue to “brainstorm” and implement collaborations with agencies that will benefit families. Each new idea can be a model for worldwide agencies such as Easter Seals, March of Dimes, United Cerebral Palsy as well grassroots organizations that serve those with disabilities across the nation!