This issue brief from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services describes the provisions of the Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act (EFMLEA). EFMLEA was created by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act to provide limited emergency paid family leave for employees to take time away from work (when telework is not an option) if their children’s child care providers or schools are closed due to COVID-19. This brief also identifies considerations for facilitating lower income workers’ participation in EFMLEA and the availability of resources under this law. To support EFMLEA’s utilization, the brief highlights immediate education efforts to support parents in understanding eligibility and other requirements of this provision. There is also guidance on how to engage low-wage employers in EFMLEA awareness and the administrative requirements for compliance.

Initiating and maintaining improvements in early care and education (ECE) programs can be challenging, due to factors such as staffing shortages, turnover, and ineffective organizational structures. To address this challenge, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) funded the Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) Project, which tests the feasibility of initiating a Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) in child care and Head Start programs that serve children from diverse income and racial/ethnic backgrounds. This OPRE Issue Brief illustrates how and why the BSC is anticipated to support improvements and the factors facilitating long-term change.

The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies Database tracks the policies for how federal monies for states and territories are used to subsidize the cost of child care for low-income families. These fact sheets provide guidance on how to use the database and provide information on the different policies for family eligibility, family copayments, provider payment rates, and provider eligibility requirements.

This Urban Institute needs assessment is an initial review of Oklahoma’s early childhood care and education (ECCE) delivery system. The review focuses on programs that directly support ECCE to include universal pre-K, Head Start and Early Head Start, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) Head Start and Early Head Start, Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships, and state-funded child care and tribal child care programs. The assessment identifies future goals and action areas to include alignment of systems of care for seamless service delivery, affordability of ECCE options, increases in the number of choices for families for culturally responsive care and services while assisting parents’ ability to work, and resources to meet the urgent health and mental health needs of rural young children.

The Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care has issued a Program Instruction (PI) to State and Territorial lead agencies administering the Child Care and Development Fund. The Instruction pertains to how to collect and submit information for the Quality Progress Report (QPR) for Fiscal Year 2019. The QPR identifies funded activities and measures used to evaluate progress on the quality of child care programs and services for children up to age 13. The QPR data will not be used to determine compliance with spending requirements of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act and Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Final Rule. Compliance with spending requirements will be reported in the ACF-696 CCDF Financial Reporting Form. State and Territorial Lead Agencies are required to complete and submit the QPR (ACF-218) for FFY 2019 (October 1, 2018-September 30, 2019) by December 31, 2019.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief looks at factors that contribute to readiness of individuals and organizations to adopt quality improvement practices within the early care and education (ECE) field. The brief defines “readiness” and suggests that the measurement of readiness has not occurred widely, in part due to a lack of readiness measures that are customized for ECE. This brief suggests potential new readiness tools and adapts these measures from other fields to support broader use of quality improvement initiatives.