Resource Library

This report:

1. Describes the Tribal Home Visiting Program, grantees, and family and community contexts that influence implementation of the program;
2. Highlights the expanded reach and availability of home visiting services in tribal communities as a function of the Tribal Home Visiting Program;
3. Tells the story of program implementation across funding years, highlighting successes and areas of improvement;
4. Describes technical assistance and systems of support provided to grantees;
5. Summarizes grantee performance measurement and grantee performance in legislatively mandated benchmark areas; and
6. Suggests recommendations for improving program reach, supports, and requirements.

Early childhood experiences with homelessness have long-lasting impacts on a child’s well-being, but access to educational services can help mitigate some of these negative effects. However, federally-funded early childhood education (ECE) programs only serve a small portion of children who experience homelessness. Taking action to mitigate the impacts of early childhood homelessness is critical to ensuring all young children have the opportunity to thrive.

The Office of Early Childhood Development at ACF hopes these profiles, with 2014-2015 data, will provide information for local, statewide and federal conversations and planning toward the goal of ending family homelessness by 2020.

This brief summarizes what the report says about the science of child development and learning.

In the last quarter of 2013, homeless shelters across Massachusetts were overwhelmed by an influx of young families. Public agency managers from the Departments of Early Education and Care (EEC), Public Health (DPH) and Housing and Community Development (DHCD) mobilized together to help shelters manage, and to reduce the impact on children from instability, trauma and high-stress. Agency managers pooled financial resources from an infusion of Race To the Top funding and in-tervened to help shelter staff communicate and lead in ways that benefited young children and their families in the short-term, and contributed to children’s positive outcomes over the long-term.

This executive summary details how a large body of research demonstrates that high-quality early learning experiences – healthy and safe environments, nurturing relationships with program staff, developmentally appropriate and rich curricula, and supportive services that foster learning and development – are critical to setting a strong foundation for children’s success in school and life. Children in high-quality programs, especially children from low-income families, show greater readiness for school and development of skills needed for lifelong success. Affordable, high-quality early learning programs make it more likely that families will be able to work. Economists have found that high-quality early learning programs have a high return for the public investment, with savings resulting from improved educational outcomes, fewer placements in special education, increased labor productivity, and reduced criminal activity.

This report explores how career pathways can offer an effective approach to address some of these challenges and support the current and evolving landscape of the ECE sector and its most disadvantaged professionals. Comprehensive and flexible education and training programs can make it easier for individuals to acquire industry-recognized credentials and higher education degrees to advance on a career trajectory. Effective career pathways approaches can also better serve workers that may experience significant barriers to education and employment advancement (i.e., low-skilled adults, and adults with limited English proficiency).

This report discusses the importance of supporting the early learning workforce – nearly a totality of whom are women – not only to improve the quality of early learning programs, but also to ensure fair pay so that they can support their own families.

This brief summarizes critical workforce knowledge and competencies to effective education practices in early childhood settings.The report organized the discussion of knowledge and competencies into two distinct groups. The first is foundational knowledge, essential to work with young children, and the second is specialized knowledge and competencies needed to provide young children with high quality learning experiences. Both the foundational and specialized knowledge and competencies are drawn from existing research on child development as well as national and state expectations for teachers of young children.

The Early Learning Career Pathways Initiative: Examining and Supporting Credentialing in the the Early Care and Education Field report describes the Six Key Elements of Career Pathways (CP) Framework which outlines the foundational components in building a career pathway system: Build Cross-Agency Partnerships and Clarify Roles; Identify Sector or Industry and Engage Employers; Design Education and Training Programs; Identify Funding Needs and Sources; Align Policies and Programs; and, Measure System Change and Performance.

This report introduces a career pathways framework 4 in use by several federal agencies, provides a national landscape of states’ requirements for ECE staff related to credentialing, highlights five states at various points in the development of ECE career pathways, and shows how early learning system components used in the majority of states align with the Six Key Elements of Career Pathways Framework that other industries use.