Recent Materials
- Apr 15, 2013 | Elizabeth Lower-Basch, Julie Strawn, and Patrick Reimherr Comments on Education and Family Tax Benefits CLASP submits comments on family and education tax credits to the Education and Family Benefits Working Group, House Committee on Ways and Means as part of the committee's work to review possible changes to the federal income tax system.
- Mar 19, 2013 | Chris Warland and Melissa Young, National Transitional Jobs Network and Elizabeth Lower-Basch, CLASP Innovative City and State Funding Approaches to Supporting Subsidized Employment and Transitional Jobs A new paper from the National Transitional Jobs Network and CLASP provides strategies and makes recommendations on leveraging and blending multiple sources of funding to support subsidized employment programs. In addition to highlighting the opportunities to use block grant funding, from both TANF and Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), the paper identifies efforts to fund these jobs by averting future expenses associated with prisons and other corrections measures and by leveraging public contracting and bidding opportunities. The webinar is also available.
- Nov 14, 2012 | Stephanie Schmit Early Head Start Participants, Programs, Families and Staff in 2011 This fact sheet reviews the 2011 Program Information Report (PIR) data for the Early Head Start program, which serves children under age 3 and pregnant women. In 2011, Early Head Start continued to provide vital services to a diverse group of low-income children and families. However, only about 4 percent of eligible children receive Early Head Start services.
- Nov 13, 2012 | Christine Johnson-Staub Planning Funding Partnerships: A Worksheet to Help States Get Started in Putting it Together The following worksheet comes from CLASP's "Putting It Together: A Guide to Financing Comprehensive Services in Child Care and Early Education." States and communities embarking on financing partnerships to expand access to comprehensive services can use this worksheet to begin mapping the need, available resources, and potential partnering strategies that will help them move forward. This document may be downloaded, edited, and saved.
- Oct 01, 2012 | Child Care and Early Education Tennessee: Monitoring and Technical Assistance System In Tennessee, safety concerns along with increasing need among low-income, working families for quality child care, prompted the state to revamp its monitoring system and enact other licensing reforms. The state has worked to strengthen its child care licensing rules, as well as implement a policy that increased the frequency of inspections to better monitor providers and required annual evaluations of providers to improve the quality of care.
- Sep 18, 2012 | Child Care and Early Education Minnesota: R.E.E.T.A.I.N. Bonus Program Minnesota’s Retaining Early Educators Through Attaining Incentives Now (R.E.E.T.A.I.N.) bonus program encourages and rewards well-trained child care professionals who stay in the field by awarding them with a monetary bonus. The R.E.E.T.A.I.N. program recognizes the importance of offering incentives to child care providers as encouragement to stay and advance in the profession.
- Sep 14, 2012 | Stephanie Schmit and Jamie Colvard Webinar: State Initiatives to Expand Early Head Start This webinar discusses the content of the new CLASP and ZERO TO THREE report, "Expanding Access to Early Head Start: State Initiatives for Infants and Toddlers at Risk." The webinar highlights how states are using innovative funding, policies, and partnerships, to expand the EHS program and better meet the needs of more low-income children and pregnant women living in their state.
- Sep 13, 2012 | Stephanie Schmit and Jamie Colvard Expanding Access to Early Head Start: State Initiatives for Infants and Toddlers at Risk All babies need good health, strong families, and positive early learning experiences to foster their healthy intellectual, social, and emotional development. Unfortunately, far too few young children receive the supports they need to build a strong foundation for future growth. The federal Early Head Start (EHS) program was created in 1994 to address the comprehensive needs of children under age 3 in low-income families and vulnerable low-income pregnant women. Research shows that EHS positively impacts children's cognitive, language, and social-emotional development; family self-sufficiency; and parental support of child development. This report highlights how states are using innovative funding, policies, and partnerships, to expand the critically important EHS program and better meet the needs of more low-income children and pregnant women living in their state.
- Aug 14, 2012 | Christine Johnson-Staub Putting it Together: A Guide to Financing Comprehensive Services in Child Care and Early Education This guide provides state policymakers and advocates with strategies to maximize resources and make policy changes that drive funds, resources, and community partners to child care and early education programs to benefit young children and families. Separate from blending and braiding funding streams at the local or program level, the strategies described in this guide focus on state policy decisions that can facilitate the innovative use of funds, encourage partnerships at the state and local level, and replicate promising models from other states.
- Jun 04, 2012 | Christine Johnson-Staub and Stephanie Schmit Home Away From Home: A Toolkit for Planning Home Visitng Partnerships with Family, Friend, and Neighbor Caregivers Home visiting and family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) partnerships hold great opportunity to reach more children with family support services during the critical early years. This toolkit provides states with an overview of FFN and home visiting partnerships, a tool to help states explore and establish this type of partnership, and case studies of existing home visiting and FFN partnerships.
- Mar 28, 2012 | Stephanie Schmit and Danielle Ewen Supporting Our Youngest Children: Early Head Start Programs in 2010 This policy brief examines the latest data from the Program Information Reports (PIR) that all Early Head Start (EHS)programs must submit to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 2010, Early Head Start saw its largest increase in enrollment in its history. EHS families continued to access services at a high rate and children continued to be connected to medical and dental services. Challenges continue to exist as teachers' salaries remain stagnant and a smaller percentage of teachers have an associate's degree or higher in 2010 compared to 2009 and 2006.
- Feb 09, 2012 | Christine Johnson-Staub Promote Access to Early, Regular and Comprehensive Screening Very young children develop in the context of their physical and mental health and the capacity of their families and other caregivers to address the full range of early childhood development. All babies and toddlers in child care need parents, providers, and caregivers supported by and linked to community resources. To support this goal, CLASP recommends that early, regular and comprehensive health, mental health, and developmental screenings and related services are made available at recommended ages for vulnerable infants and toddlers through connections with all infant and toddler providers and caregivers. This document presents research supporting the recommendation to promote access to early, regular, and comprehensive screening.
- Jan 18, 2012 | Child Care and Early Education A Tool Using Data to Inform a State Early Childhood Agenda This tool is intended for state advocates and policymakers to use as they work to develop a state early childhood agenda. It includes a series of key questions to understand the context and conditions of young children, birth to six, in the state. Where possible, we also include infant/toddler specific questions. Questions include data on demographics and program participation (such as health and nutrition programs), as well as the details of child care and early education settings in the state. Users can download and save a copy of this tool, fill in their state’s data, and compare to national data points (which are provided where appropriate).
- Dec 05, 2011 | Stephanie Schmit Early Head Start Participants, Programs, Families, and Staff in 2010 This fact sheet reviews the 2010 Program Information Reports (PIR) data for the Early Head Start program, which serves children under age 3 and pregnant women. In 2010, Early Head Start continued to provide vital services to a diverse group of low-income children and families. However, less than 4 percent of eligible children receive Early Head Start services.
- Dec 02, 2011 | Child Care and Early Education Louisiana: Mental Health Consultation (MHC) Program Mental health consultations can help to equip child care providers who serve infants and toddlers with the tools and training needed to implement developmentally appropriate practices that foster healthy child development and support children with special needs. In July 2007, Louisiana’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) contracted with the Tulane Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health to launch a Mental Health Consultation (MHC) program for child care centers.
- Dec 02, 2011 | Child Care and Early Education Louisiana: Quality Start Child Care Rating System Louisiana Quality Start Child Care Rating System is a voluntary quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for all licensed child care in Louisiana, which includes child care centers, Head Start and Early Head Start programs. design and implementation was a major focus of the state’s early childhood initiative, BrightStart, which in 2009 was designated as the state’s early childhood advisory council. With funding from the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Quality Start was implemented statewide in 2007.
- Dec 02, 2011 | Child Care and Early Education Pennsylvania: Keystone Babies The Keystone Babies program was created to expand access to high-quality early learning settings for vulnerable infants and toddlers in Pennsylvania. Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the voluntary program offers financial support to center-based providers to create additional slots for low-income infants and toddlers in the state’s child care assistance program, Child Care Works (CCW).
- Dec 01, 2011 | Child Care and Early Education Massachusetts: Family Child Care System Contracts Family child care (FCC) is a common type of child care for children under the age of three. The Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) contracts with FCC systems to ensure a stable level of access to high-quality family child care throughout the state. Any FCC system in Massachusetts that agrees to provide EEC subsidized early education and care services through its affiliated providers must hold a contract with EEC. FCC systems are significant sources of assistance and support for FCC providers in the state, particularly for those who serve subsidized children. In 2009, more than a quarter (28 percent) of subsidized children in Massachusetts were infants and toddlers, and more than a quarter of subsidized children (28 percent) were cared for in family child care or group child care homes.
- Nov 17, 2011 | Danielle Ewen and Hannah Matthews Caring for Babies: How State Child Care Policies Can Support Continuity Quality, stable child care arrangements support the healthy development of infants and toddlers. This presentation from the 2011 NAEYC Annual Conference in Orlando, FL describes how state subsidy policies can support retention of child care subsidies and continuous care for infants and toddlers.
- Oct 05, 2011 | Christine Johnson-Staub Arkansas: Developmental Screening Partnership Children develop along a continuum, with milestones reached at ages that vary within an accepted timeframe. Development that does not happen within the expected timeframe can raise concerns about developmental disorders, health conditions, or other factors contributing negatively to the child’s development. Child care providers are often early witnesses to the signs of developmental problems with the children in their care, but they may not have the capacity or training to identify a problem, discuss concerns with families, and guide families in seeking related services.