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.

This Child Trends brief assesses state-level efforts to create data infrastructure and integration of home visiting and early childhood data systems. The brief highlights strategies and examples for state leaders to use in planning for costs of integrating data pertaining to home visiting and other early childhood issues. Decision makers can use this information to answer questions about access to early childhood services and to track the outcomes of children who utilize these services.

This U.S. Department of Labor policy brief reviews approaches to incorporate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Employment and Training (SNAP E&T) services into career pathway programs at the state level. These approaches include selecting SNAP E&T partners already offering career pathway services to SNAP participants and helping the partners expand their reach, and collaborating with SNAP E&T partners in filling service delivery gaps. Integrating SNAP E&T services and participants into career pathways may strengthen SNAP E & T’s alignment with the workforce system, which is a priority under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).

This Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set of resources identifies three case studies of how states have utilized research on adverse childhood experiences to inform child abuse and neglect prevention. The case studies reflect research to practice implications for service delivery in Alaska, Oklahoma, Washington State, and Wisconsin.

More than one-quarter of maltreatment victims are under the age of 3, and these children often encounter additional trauma due to their family’s interaction with the child welfare system; this involvement can involve separations from the family and placements. According to research, these types of separations can result in lifelong trauma. This strategy brief describes the Safe Babies Court Team™ (SBCT) approach, which strives to minimize trauma when court involvement is needed by improving the collaboration of the courts, child welfare agencies, and other organizations in supporting young children and their families. SBCT involves meetings of both family and community court teams. The brief includes SBCT’s key components, key success factors, and an example of how the SBCT approach has impacted Florida.

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.

The Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management developed and launched this database, which is an updated index of 29 neighborhood-level indicators pointing to opportunities for child well-being in about 72,000 neighborhoods. The indicators reflect three data components: education, health and environment, and social and economic domains. The education component reflects access to quality early childhood education, quality of elementary and secondary schools, and educational supports. The health and environment domain covers access to healthy food and green space as well as exposure to industrial pollutants. The social and economic data captures indicators that measure access to employment and family economic resources.

This Urban Institute report examines the professional development and workforce development systems in place for home visiting staff funded under the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program. The report includes analysis of a national survey of all MIECHV-funded local implementing agencies (LIAs) and 26 LIAs. The survey assesses why home visitors enter, stay in, or leave the home visiting field; their backgrounds and qualifications needed to enter the field; and their work environments and opportunities for advancement.