Resource Library

A guide to support the safe and healthy development of young children in shelter settings. In this tool, you will find recommendations and information on how your shelter environment, programming, policies, and staff can support early childhood safety and development of children experiencing homelessness.

HRSA-ACF Letter to State MIECHV Grantees

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 discusses how congress required the Secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Education (ED), in consultation with all federal agencies, to identify "all early learning and care programs for children less than six years of age," provide specific recommendations for eliminating overlap and fragmentation among federal early learning and care programs, and make recommendations for streamlining all such programs. The Secretaries appreciate the opportunity to present an overview and analysis of the primary federal early learning programs and to offer recommendations on how to address the needs of children and families. This report also discusses the Administration’s efforts to maximize our current and future investments to increase the quality of and access to early learning for children from birth to kindergarten and how HHS and ED (the Departments) are fostering coordination and collaboration at the federal, state, and local levels to ensure a more effective, efficient, and high-quality system of early learning.

November 2016 ECD Newsletter

Georgia’s Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership is designed to leverage coordination with other key organizations in order to develop a system of shared services in two high-poverty areas within the state. As the lead agency, Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) provides administrative and financial management, quality assurance and monitoring, and works with state and local agencies to provide key services, including facilitation of referrals.

Delaware’s Early Head Start Child Care Partnership (Partnership) grant is housed within the Office of Early Learning, which administers DE’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), Delaware Stars, CCDF licensing and Head Start Collaboration. Both family and center based partners participate. All of the center and family provider partners operate at a 3, 4 or 5 QRIS rating. Each partner identifies county-level service priorities, which include dual-language children, homeless children, children in foster care, and children in military families.                                                  

California’s Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership (Partnership) is designed to build on existing state infrastructure that supports a high-quality early care and education system. The Partnership involves both center and family child care home education networks centered in 11 rural counties in Northern California where previously awarded federal grant funds from the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge funds were not available.

The purpose of this guidance document is to support states and early childhood programs by providing recommendations from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for developing and implementing career pathways to support the professional learning, practice, and compensation of early childhood educators and program directors.

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.