Child Care

Developing measures of implementation and cost of center-based early care and education.

OPRE's Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency-Next Generation (BIAS-NG) project continues ACF’s exploration of the application of behavioral science to the programs and target populations of ACF.

Explore OPRE's portfolio of work on the application of behavioral science to challenges faced by programs that provide social services to individuals and families with low incomes by reviewing relevant reports, infographics, newsletters, and more.

The purpose of this project is to assist the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), states, and localities in understanding what drives workforce turnover in the early care and education (ECE) field and to evaluate promising strategies to support recruitment and retention of a qualified ECE workforce. The dynamics contributing to high rates of staff departures in some center-based ECE programs and decreasing supply of family child care providers, including individuals paid to provide noncustodial care, are not well understood.

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families leads and supports investigation of the needs of Hispanic populations served by ACF and of promising approaches to promote social and economic well-being among low-income Hispanic families. The Center’s research focuses on early care and education; poverty reduction and economic self-sufficiency; and fatherhood, family structure, and family dynamics. In addition to generating new research to inform ACF programs and policies to better serve Hispanic children and families, the Center aims to build research capacity by providing tools, resources, and support for the research community and emerging scholars.

Explore resources to help CCDF lead agencies use research.

Discover how the Center will build research and evaluation capacity in the child care subsidy policy field by facilitating information sharing, learning, and collaboration across ACF-sponsored research partnerships funded by OPRE.

State and tribal CCDF grantees' research projects on the implementation of CCDBG Act of 2014.

Learn more about OPRE's research on states' and territories' challenges and successes with implementing the interstate background check requirements of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 .

The Child Care Policy Research Partnership (CCPRP) Grant Program supports active collaborations between Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies and researchers to investigate questions of immediate relevance to local and national child care policies and practices. The overarching goals of this grant program are to...

Child care research partnerships to investigate questions related to CCDF.

The CCDF Policies Database is a source of information on the detailed policies used to operate child care subsidy programs under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). Since 2008, The Urban Institute has collected, coded, and disseminated the CCDF policies in effect across the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories and outlying areas, using consistent methods across places and over time. The information in the CCDF Policies Database is based primarily on the documents that caseworkers use as they work with families and providers, as well as the CCDF Plans and amendments submitted by States/Territories to ACF, state law, and regulations used by the staff operating the program.

The purpose of the Child Care and Early Education Policy and Research Analysis (CCEEPRA) project is to support policy and program planning and decision-making with rigorous, research-based information. Through CCEEPRA, Child Trends identifies high-priority issues in child care and early education (CCEE), develops research activities to address the issues, and shares results and implications with state, federal, and regional leaders.

The Child and Family Data Archive (CFData) is the place to discover, access, and analyze data on young children, their families and communities, and the programs that serve them. OPRE funds numerous data collection efforts through research studies on a wide range of early care and education (ECE) topics within and across child care, Head Start, and home visiting.

OPRE’s child and family development work includes research and evaluation projects primarily concerned with child care and child welfare. This portfolio additionally examines the culturally diverse experiences of children and families served by ACF programs.

Discover this project’s work to understand how parents find and use information to make informed choices regarding their children’s enrollment in early care and education programs, including how states’ and territories’ consumer education efforts inform parents’ selection.

The Coordinated Evaluations of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies and Initiatives: Phase I grants (2021 - 2023) support research partnerships between CCDF Lead Agencies in states, territories, or tribes and researchers to plan rigorous evaluations of policy and practices related to setting and implementing child care subsidy payment rates and/or family co-payments. This grant program provides an opportunity for the CCDF Lead Agencies and their research partners to work together during Phase I to develop a research plan to examine the effectiveness of child care subsidy payment rate and family co-payment methods and structures on CCDF participants’ access to quality child care.

Learn about this project’s work to explore how child care and Head Start programs can improve the quality of social-emotional learning services received by young children while institutionalizing continuous quality improvement activities.

The Early Care and Education Leadership Study (ExCELS), funded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families, has three goals: (1) fill the definitional and measurement gaps to understand what leadership looks like as defined by who participates in leadership in center-based ECE settings and the ways in which leaders can improve quality experiences for children in ECE settings, (2) develop a short-form measure of ECE leadership, and (3) identify actionable leadership quality improvement (QI) initiatives and methods of evaluating them.

Learn about a Child Care Dissertation Grant program available to support dissertation research on child care policy issues that add to our knowledge about the efficacy of child care subsidy policies and programs in supporting employment and self-sufficiency outcomes for parents, and providing positive learning and school readiness outcomes for children.

Learn about the Early Care and Education Research Scholars (ECERS): The Head Start Dissertation Grant program is designed to build research capacity in and knowledge of effective early childhood interventions with low-income children and families. The grant program provides support for dissertation research conducted by graduate students working in partnership with local Head Start or Early Head Start programs.

Explore Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships Research, a detailed follow-up study on EHS programs and child care providers (including child care center directors and family child care providers) who participated in the National Descriptive Study of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships, to learn whether and how partnerships have been sustained or have dissolved, and which features of partnerships support or impede sustainability.

Amid an unprecedented expansion of early care and education (ECE) programming, many ECE systems and program leaders must piece together multiple funding sources to meet the total cost of delivering high-quality programming. Bringing together, or braiding, these various funding streams requires coordination across different levels of the ECE system and has critical implications for program quality, workforce strength, and equity in access and outcomes for young children and their families. Of particular interest is how Head Start participates in or uses approaches that braid federal funding alongside state and local sources to provide high-quality, comprehensive services. 

This project examines various activities examining home-based child care (HBCC) supply and quality. HBCC is a vital part of our nation’s child care supply and the most common form of care for children living in poverty. Yet HBCC providers have fewer resources and supports compared to those in child care centers, and many HBCC providers face challenges in providing quality care.

Identifying the competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics) essential to a given profession may help to provide a common language and lens for assessing job performance and provide a clear structure for professional growth and development. The Infant and Toddler Teacher and Caregiver Competencies (ITTCC) project is examining existing efforts...

This project investigates how the 2014 reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act has affected markets and how states have approached implementation of reauthorization in different ways. The project includes a policy analysis, literature scan, roundtable with stakeholders from the child care field, and analysis of state Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) investments in child care quality improvements.

Learn about this project’s work and its reports regarding families that are eligible for Migrant and Seasonal Head Start.

Learn about the Center’s investigation of assets, needs, and experiences of the diverse population of African American families and children served (or potentially served) by ACF programs, as well as promising approaches to address economic and social inequities. This work includes a primary focus on childcare assistance, TANF, and Head Start and Early Head Start programs.

Learn about and discover the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE).

The Network of infant/toddler Researchers (NitR) consortium brings together leading applied researchers with policymakers and technical assistance providers responsible for overseeing and supporting early childhood programs serving families during pregnancy and the first three years of life.

The Q-CCIIT PD Tools project developed a research-based professional development system called We Grow Together. As part of We Grow Together, teachers and caregivers work with their professional development providers (mentors, coaches, supervisors) using resources delivered on an interactive website.

Explore OPRE's Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Human Services Analysis Execution Project for information on OPRE's approach to identifying racial and ethnic disparities in human services programs administered by the Administration for Children and Families.

In 2013, OPRE commissioned four interrelated reports on self-regulation and toxic stress from a team at the Center for Child and Social Policy at Duke University. That team and other experts have since created multiple practice-oriented resources grounded in the initial reports. Together, these reports and resources comprise the ’Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Series.’ 

The purpose of this project is to advance understanding of how home visiting programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) and Tribal MIECHV Programs can and do support family economic well-being.  

Family economic well-being is key to families’ long-term stability and is linked to positive outcomes in other areas targeted by home visiting programs, such as parenting.

Explore the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center (TRC)'s goals for addressing gaps in early childhood research with American Indian and Alaska Native families through partnerships with tribal Head Start, Early Head Start, child care, and home visiting programs.

Explore how the Tribal Research Center for Early Childhood Development and Systems (TRC) promotes excellence in community-based participatory research and evaluation of ACF early childhood initiatives that serve tribal communities.

Learn how workers with low incomes weigh factors such as benefit loss, ease of resuming benefits once lost, marginal tax rates, and job instability when deciding whether to accept an earnings increase.

In 2021, OPRE contracted with Urban Institute to better understand the types of child care and early education (CCEE) supply-building and sustainability efforts states, territories, and tribes are undertaking as well as to plan for a potential future evaluation of those efforts.  

The project will pay particular attention to how the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the child care and early education market (e.g., supply and demand, cost of care) and how supply-building or sustainability efforts may have changed to be responsive to these changes.

TRLECE seeks to strengthen the field’s understanding of the role of the child care and early education (CCEE) licensing system in supporting children, families, and key stakeholders (e.g., child care providers, licensing agencies, and state administrators).

The VIQI study is testing how different levels and features of classroom quality relate to children’s developmental outcomes by looking at the relationship of initial child care and early education (CCEE) classroom quality to changes in observed quality and children’s outcomes through a rigorous experimental design.

The American Indian and Alaska Native Early Childhood Needs Assessment Project (AI/AN EC Needs Assessment) seeks to lay the foundation for understanding the need for early childhood services in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.  The project outlines a series of designs for future studies that will inform a national assessment of the unmet need for early childhood care, education, and home visiting services (prenatal to age 5) in tribal communities...

In 1997, the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) was launched to provide descriptive, nationally representative information on the characteristics, experiences, and development of Head Start children and families, and the characteristics of the Head Start programs and staff who serve them. FACES has historically not included Region XI, whose programs are designed to serve predominantly American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) children and families.

Descriptive study of the range of existing state and local approaches to coordinating early care and education services with other health and human services for children and families with low incomes.

Many human services programs are designed such that individuals must make active decisions and go through a series of steps in order to benefit from them — from deciding which programs to apply for, to completing forms, attending meetings, showing proof of eligibility, and arranging travel and child care...

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency Capstone project, led by MDRC, synthesized the work of the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project and conducted dissemination activities to ensure the results from BIAS were shared with a broad audience of research, policy, and practice stakeholders. BIAS Capstone furthered the dissemination work conducted for BIAS through a range of diverse activities and products...

The Center for Early Care and Education Research: Dual Language Learners (CECER-DLL) is a cooperative agreement awarded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The primary goal of the Center...

The overall purpose of the Child Care Administrative Data Analysis Cooperative Agreements is to support Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies in conducting rigorous, policy-relevant research that primarily involves the analysis of child care...

Research Connections provides access to thousands of research publications regarding early care and education.

This project (aka Design Phase for National Study of Child Care Supply and Demand) developed sampling and methodology options for a National Survey of Early Care and Education, with special focus on low-income households with children ages birth...

The goal of this project was to develop a new measure that will assess the quality of child care settings, specifically the quality of caregiver-child interactions for infants and toddlers in non-parental care. The new measure is sensitive to the...

The purpose of this project was to expand the knowledge base on early childhood development and programming by supporting secondary data analysis of archived datasets funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE).

Descriptive, nationally representative information on the characteristics, experiences, and development of Head Start children and families, and the characteristics of the Head Start programs and staff who serve them.

ACF’s Hispanic Research Work Group brings together experts in a wide range of content areas relevant to ACF’s mission to assist ACF/OPRE in identifying research priorities concerning low-income, Hispanic families.

Explore OPRE's project, Integrated Approaches to Supporting Child Development and Improving Family Economic Security, for reports and briefs related to integrated (two-generation / whole-family) approaches to meeting the needs of children, parents, and families together.

The National Study of Child Care of Low-Income Families project studied the low-income child care market in 25 communities in 17 states, with a sub-study to examine the family child care market in 5 neighborhoods drawn from these communities...

This project examined associations between the quality of early care and education settings and child outcomes, asking whether certain thresholds of quality or dosage need to be met or particular aspects of quality need to be present before linkages are apparent. Interrelationships of these factors and relevance for different age groups of children between the ages of birth and 5-years participating in center-based care settings will also be considered...

The project will create resources for States regarding the evaluation of child care quality rating systems (QRSs), systems that have been put in place to measure, monitor, and promote high-quality child care. The project has five goals...

This project investigated how existing work on racial and ethnic disparities could inform more accurate identification and interpretation of ethnic and racial differences in programs administered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Through this work, this project...

Since 2000, Congress has appropriated about $10 million per year of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) discretionary funds to be used for child care research and evaluation. These funds have supported projects that add to our knowledge about the...

The Secondary Analyses of Data on Early Care and Education Grants aim to support researchers conducting secondary analyses of data to address key questions of relevance to the goals and outcomes of programs administered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), in particular the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Head Start/Early Head Start (HS/EHS).

Explore OPRE's projects for reports and more information on self-sufficiency, welfare and employment.

Learn about this study of coaching practices as implemented in Head Start and center-based and family child care settings.

The Language Minority Roundtable was a working meeting where invited participants engaged in critical dialogue regarding how research can support efforts of policymakers and practitioners to serve the language and literacy needs of young language...

In 2007, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services funded a research project, Supporting Quality in Home-Based Child Care, to...

The Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers (Q-CCIIT) observation tool is a reliable and valid research-based observational tool that measures the quality of interactions between infants and toddlers...

The purpose of the TANF and CCDF Research Synthesis Project was to inform research planning and support evidence-based decision making related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) programs...

Effect sizes are increasingly applied to describe the magnitude of findings about program effectiveness across a range of policy contexts. Though more researchers are recognizing the importance of including effect sizes in manuscripts, at times these...

Technology has become increasingly prevalent in early care and education settings, yet little is known about the effectiveness, function, and requirements for technologies that are available to early childhood programs. The purpose of this project was to review the knowledge base related to the use of technology to support the practice of early childhood practitioners who work directly with children and families. The review was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago...