Charting Progress for Babies in Child Care
Use Subsidy Policies to Promote Stable, Quality Care
Online Resources
Resources for state child care subsidy administrators:
- CLASP's report Ensuring Quality Care for Low-Income Babies: Contracting Directly with Providers to Expand and Improve Infant and Toddler Care examines how states are using contracts for quality, subsidized child care slots for babies.
- In Designing Subsidy Systems to Meet the Needs of Families: An Overview of Policy Research, the Urban Institute studied ways that subsidy administrators can help families access and maintain subsidies-such as linking subsidies to other programs; improving customer service; simplifying application, recertification, and reporting processes; and minimizing inadvertent termination of subsidies due to temporary changes in families' circumstances.
- The National Infant and Toddler Child Care Initiative provides technical assistance on infant and toddler policy issues to state CCDBG administrators.
- The National Child Care Information Center provides technical assistance through consultants and general information tracking and posts links to state administrative rules.
- The Food Research and Action Center has materials explaining CACFP and how state administrators can use the program to provide nutritious meals and snacks and training/monitoring in all child care settings, including family, friend, and neighbor settings. Geraldine Henchy is the director of nutrition policy and early childhood programs.
- The costs to the Department of Defense of the military child care system, renowned for its quality, have been analyzed by RAND in a report and in a research brief.
Examples of state-sponsored analysis of subsidy policies and costs of infant/toddler care:
- A Massachusetts report Keeping the Promise: A Study of the Massachusetts Child Care Voucher System found data that informed the state's switch to 12-month determination for most families.
- Massachusetts also conducted a state cost, quality, and outcomes study focused on infant and toddler care.
Visit page: http://www.clasp.org/babiesinchildcare/recommendations?id=0014