Start Early’s Post

The Minnesota Department of Human Services is collecting community feedback on the 2025-2027 Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Plan, which will be submitted to the federal government on July 1, 2024. The plan describes how the state will use their CCDF funds to improve the health, safety and quality of child care and help families with low incomes access care for their children. Completing this survey will inform decisions about how these federal funds should be used. All survey questions are optional. It begins with four questions that everyone can answer and ends with optional topics (shown below) which contain more focused questions. Child Care Assistance Program Training and professional development for the child care workforce Quality improvement supports for child care programs Consumer education for families Initiatives to build the supply of child care and support the workforce Quality improvement for programs serving school-age children. This survey will close on Wednesday, March 20 at 11pm at which time responses will no longer be able to be collected. Follow this link to the Survey: https://lnkd.in/g3bTkAcU

I agree with this 100%... affordable and accessible child care is needed for all working families who want it. Federal funding, funding, funding = more child care for those who need it! #childcare #federalfunding #MIworkingfamilies #affordablechildcare #accessiblechildcare

Check out The Century Foundation's new Child Care Checklist... We've made a lot of progress on #childcare and still have a lot to do. ARPA funds stabilized the sector, supported families, lowered costs and raised early educator wages. States saw how impactful it was to invest public funding and some increased their child care budgets (thanks to yrs of advocacy&hard work). The Biden Administration's first ever CARE EO set the path for impactful changes, including the new HHS Child Care rule that will lower costs for families and support providers. And now it's time to: **Stabilize the child care sector with $16 billion in emergency funding , and **Build the early learning and child care system America needs.

As the parent of a child in early education I often think to myself, why is it so hard…. To want teachers to be paid well without having my family break its own budget? To make teachers and parents feel rewarded for investing in their kids, not financially cursed? To positively contribute to the overall well-being of educators without having to hurt my family's own financial well-being? For our society to value the investment in young children by setting BOTH teachers and parents up for economic success? For the #appreciation of our teachers to be embedded as a societal value and not just as a value for a week? Why is it so hard to see change in early education? In the affordability of it? In how we invest in teachers?  Why is it so hard? It's stressful, frustrating, and sad. We still have so much work to do within this system to give you-teachers, and us-parents, the economic support to have our children and their village the ability to thrive.   I thank you for continuing to champion and serve the minds of our young ones. It’s hard, it’s thankless, and it’s one of the most important things you do for our world. #teacherappreciationweek #earlyeducation #childcare #whyisitsohard

MTF’s Chartbook on C3 includes a history of the program and its purpose, an overview of funding history, a breakdown of how the grant formula works for providers, and data showing the program's impact. Make sure to check it out here: https://t.co/6vAC1QzO3P #mapoli #childcare #earlyeducation #publicpolicy

Guaranteed income programs, which provide families with direct unrestricted cash payments, support the heathy development of young children in families with low incomes. However, participation in these programs may affect families’ eligibility for child care subsidies. Policymakers can help protect child care subsidy benefits for families participating in guaranteed income programs by ensuring cash received from these programs is excluded from income determination. https://lnkd.in/dB56inxk  

"The final rule requires states to pay CCDBG providers more fairly, which will help stabilize operations for participating providers and encourage more providers to participate in CCDBG. As a result, all home-based and center-based CCDBG providers will start getting paid on-time. Additionally, the final rule ensures that providers are paid based on program enrollment, and encourages states to further increase provider subsidies." Read more about how this impacts the Child Care & Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program, which supports over a million children and their families each month with child care assistance. https://lnkd.in/eKDU9s65

Today, alongside Stephanie Schmit, I had the opportunity to present on inequitable access to child care subsidies at the Child Care Aware of America conference. Federal child care programs are underfunded, pandemic relief funding is expiring, and access to care continues to be a challenge for various communities and localities. As a result of these and many other factors, there is a gap in the number of families who are eligible for federal child care assistance versus the number who actually receive this assistance. In fact, only 18% of eligible families received assistance through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) in 2020. Our presentation discussed the circumstances that led us to where we are today, along with the national- and state-level data from the Center for Law and Social Policy’s forthcoming report on inequitable access to child care subsidies. We acknowledged that various challenges remain in closing this gap in a resource-constrained system, but that avenues at both the state and federal levels still exist to serve more families in our present system. I was honored to represent CLASP in this important conversation. Our child care system requires extensive transformation to close equity gaps, offer culturally sensitive care, and to support families with low incomes in achieiving economic security. Stay tuned for CLASP’s latest edition of the Inequitable Access report!

Kansas Children Deserve Better The proposal in House Sub. for SB 96 completely disregards the work done by child care professionals and KDHE. Providers and early learning advocates – not lawmakers – know what regulation changes are needed to meet the needs of providers, children, and parents while keeping everyone safe. Even further, the bill would place the proposed Office of Early Childhood under the Department of Commerce (instead as a stand-alone agency with more autonomy), allow the Legislature to potentially misappropriate the Kansas Endowment for Youth Fund and the Children’s Initiatives Fund, and restrict the way the state can fund child care slots. Ironically, despite bill proponents’ desire to reduce regulatory burden, the bill adds commercial fire code requirements for home-based providers to now match the requirements for school districts. This could result in established home daycares being required to add safety measures like fire sprinkler systems throughout the home. https://lnkd.in/gcrbJ38B

I am thrilled to share our new brief focused on protecting child care subsidies for families participating in guaranteed income programs (w/ Emily Maxfield)! Key takeaways- Policymakers can help protect child care subsidy benefits for families participating in guaranteed income programs by: (1) seeking state waivers to safeguard access to child care subsidies for specific guaranteed income programs (2) creating state policy environments, either through state administrative or legislative action, that protect access to child care subsidies (3) updating Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) State Plans to exclude cash received from guaranteed income programs from income determination for child care subsidies (4) updating federal CCDF guidelines regarding income determination for cash received through guaranteed income programs https://lnkd.in/e4g6fh-p