Office of Child Care Initiatives

Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014

In November of 2014, Congressed passed a new child care law making significant changes to the CCDF program. These changes will help ensure a safer, more family-friendly child care program. They will also provide additional training and supports to child care providers. For more information on the CCDBG Act of 2014 and policy resources related to the law, visit the OCC CCDF Reauthorization policy resource page. For technical assistance and training resources related to the law, visit the Child Care Technical Assistance CCDF Reauthorization page.

ChildCare.gov 

The CCDBG Reauthorization Act of 2014 included a requirement to design and develop a national website to disseminate publicly available child care consumer education information for parents and working families. ChildCare.gov is a partnership between the Office of Child Care and state child care agencies. The information on the ChildCare.gov website is designed to help parents link to their state or territory child care website and search for safe, quality child care by zip code, and to find support services in their community that families need to grow and thrive. States, Territories and all stakeholders are encouraged to access the ChildCare.gov Project page for additional resources.

• ChildCare.gov Background
• ChildCare.gov Infographic

Emergency Preparedness

A primary goal of OCC is to help ensure early childhood programs support children's healthy growth and development. This goal becomes especially important in the event of a major disaster or emergency, as children are among our most vulnerable populations. OCC created a web page of emergency preparedness resources for grantees and child care providers. Some of the key resources include:

• 2017 Emergency Preparedness and Response Planning for Child Care Information Memorandum
• Information from the State Capacity Building Center

• Post-Disaster Child Care Needs and Resources

Consumer Education

Consumer Education is designed to help parents access information in order to make informed child care choices and to strengthen requirements to protect the health and safety of children in child care.

States and territories are working to meet the requirements in the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 (P.L. 114-186) and the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Final Rule (45 C.F.R. Section 98) published in 2016 and to maximize these efforts by implementing best practices for engaging families through effective consumer education. Well-crafted consumer education that is strength-based and culturally, linguistically, and otherwise responsive to the needs of communities they serve, can reach large numbers of diverse families and ensure the widest possible access to information and services. 

These resources can provide guidance to states and territories as they develop and implement effective consumer education resources for families. For more information visit the Consumer Education page.

Tribal Home Visiting

The Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care, in collaboration with the Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, awards grants for the Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program. The Tribal Home Visiting Program is designed to develop and strengthen tribal capacity to:

1. support and promote the health and well-being of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) families;
2. expand the evidence-base around home visiting in tribal communities; and
3. support and strengthen cooperation and linkages between programs that service AIAN children and their families.

Tribal Home Visiting grants support 5-year cooperative agreements to conduct community needs assessments and plan for and implement high-quality, culturally-relevant, evidence-based home visiting programs in at-risk Tribal communities. These grantees collect and report on performance measures, and participate in research and evaluation activities to build the knowledge base on home visiting among Native populations.

Tribal Early Learning Initiative

The Tribal Early Learning Initiative (TELI) is a partnership between ACF and American Indian tribes with Child Care Development Fund, Head Start/Early Head Start, and Tribal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting programs. The purposes of the TELI are to:

• Support tribes to coordinate tribal early learning and development programs
• Create and support seamless, high-quality early-childhood systems
• Raise the quality of services to children and families across the pregnancy-to-kindergarten entry continuum
• Identify and break down barriers to collaboration and systems improvement