About the Office of Early Childhood Development
The Office of Early Childhood Development (ECD) oversees early care and education programs in the Administration of Children and Families (ACF). ECD provides leadership to support a national agenda focused on young children, their families, and the early care and education workforce. During young children’s formative years, the early childhood programs are focused on ensuring all children and families have access to comprehensive, high-quality programs, and services. Read more about ECD’s current initiatives and find more information here on the leaders leading us forward in this work.
Program offices within ECD include the Office of Child Care (OCC), the Office of Head Start (OHS), Tribal Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (TMIECHV), and Preschool Development Grants Birth through Five (PDG B-5).
Mission
ECD Mission
Promoting an early childhood sector that meets the needs of children and their families in communities across the country.
ECD Vision
It is our responsibility to create opportunities for children and their families and the early childhood workforce so that —
Children and Families have safe and supportive experiences that promote child development across multiple domains, including physical, cognitive and social-emotional; and opportunities that meet families’ unique needs; and The Early Childhood Workforce has a system that attracts, prepares, supports, and retains a highly qualified workforce; and compensation, including benefits, that demonstrates the value of the workforce to our communities.
Our Commitment to this Vision
ACF will work in partnership with our federal partners, states, territories, tribes, other grantee partners and communities across the country to ensure our policies and funding opportunities are coordinated, and responsive to community needs:
Coordinated and flexible so that federal funding administered by different agencies and program offices can work together at the state, territory, tribe and local level toward shared outcomes and easier access to services for families and communities; and
Responsive to needs that we hear directly from families and early childhood workers within specific cultural and community contexts.