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.

This recorded webinar from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation assists Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) staff and partners in how to use administrative data to answer questions from external constituencies, including state legislators, agency heads, local child care providers, and other key stakeholders. The webinar includes three parts: a dozen operational questions that CCDF staff have addressed with administrative data, guidance and tips for using administrative data, and presentations from lead CCDF staff in Georgia and Massachusetts about how they used Quality Rating Improvement System and licensing data to address policy and operational questions.

This Administration for Children and Families (ACF) blogpost, published by the Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, summarizes findings of roundtables that have occurred across the country covering how to improve access to affordable, high-quality child care and offers opportunities for additional input with a Request for Information. The blogpost also discusses the economic impact of child care and innovations at the state and local level to include increased subsidy rates for child care providers, reduced waiting lists for child care subsidies, qualified professional development for child care providers, and shared service models to support family child care providers that colocate housing and early learning facilities.