Resource Library

The descriptive brief provides an overview of the qualifications and the professional development activities of the nation’s infant/toddler workforce, based on representative data collected by the National Survey of Early Care and Education. The goal of this brief is to help the field better understand the strengths and needs of the infant/toddler workforce in center-based as well as home-based early care and education programs...

These two publications address the issues facing early care and education providers because of monitoring by multiple agencies and organizations...

The 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) is a coordinated set of four nationally representative surveys aimed at describing the early care and education (ECE) landscape in the United States, including the use and availability of care. Information was collected from individuals and programs providing ECE in center-based and home-based settings to children age birth through five years, and from households with children under age 13... 

Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) programs provide child development, family support, and family engagement services to young children and their migrant and seasonal farmworker families. MSHS programs are designed to meet the unique needs of migrant and seasonally working families.  MSHS programs usually provide bilingual services and sometimes operate in non-standard hours or in varying locations throughout the agricultural season...

This report describes the research and evaluation activities undertaken by our Division of Child and Family Development in 2019. Brief project descriptions provide an overview of the range of projects conducted by the Division during the year in early childhood research, child care, Head Start and Early Head Start, child welfare, human trafficking, and cultural diversity.

In the U.S. in 2012, public funding of early care and education (ECE) could come from a variety of programs and levels of government (federal, state, local). This analysis of data from the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education uses household reports to estimate percentages of children under 5 years who enrolled in 2012 in two types of publicly funded ECE: center-based and paid home-based care...

This report details 14 tribes and tribal organizations’ implementation of service coordination efforts across Tribal TANF and child welfare services. It describes the tribes and tribal organizations, explores their journeys to strengthen tribal families, identifies project facilitators and challenges, and shares lessons learned...

This logic model was developed as part of the Descriptive Study of the ELMC Initiative. In September 2010, the Office of Head Start (OHS), in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF), awarded 17-month Early Learning Mentor Coach (ELMC) grants to 131 Head Start (HS) grantees. Contractors conducted a descriptive study of the ELMC initiative, detailing the coaching approaches HS grantees used in their programs. A key task of the ELMC project was to develop a conceptual model of coaching, both to provide a framework for the study and to help identify factors that grantee administrators should consider when designing and implementing a coaching initiative. The team chose a logic model framework for portraying coaching because it allowed them to characterize the entire coaching initiative—not only the structure and processes of various coaching approaches, but also the assumptions and resources, the intermediate outputs and potential outcomes, and the contextual factors that may influence the implementation and success of a coaching initiative. When establishing an early care and education coaching approach, program administrators will need to make decisions on multiple important dimensions. This brief presents key dimensions shaping coaching approaches, along with a graphic representation of the program logic model for coaching in early care and education settings.

This brief explores emerging evidence from social science research on the contribution of early care and education (ECE) to the child welfare system’s goals of child safety, permanency, and well-being. The examination of that evidence points to the potential value of early care and education for young children in the child welfare system, but the best available data suggests that the child welfare population tends to under-utilize ECE...

This brief addresses privacy and security considerations related to computer software, mobile applications (apps), and web-based tools that early childhood practitioners may access via the Internet as part of their work with children and families...