CHILD CARE COLLABORATIONS AND QUALITY

Education Development Center, Inc., Newton MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project explores the potential role of state and community-level collaboration in enhancing child care quality, access, satisfaction, comprehensive services, and ultimately family and child outcomes, with an emphasis on care for infants and toddlers. The initial focus is to describe the nature of collaborations between the state Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) lead agency, the state Head Start Collaboration Office, and, where applicable, the state agency with administrative oversight for pre-Kindergarten (pre-K). We consider four dimensions: actors, activities, interactions and goals. The study methods and procedures will be conducted in two phases. The first phase looks at the state-level actors, activities, interactions, and goals and paints a national picture of trends regarding state agency collaboration. The second phase looks in-depth at two states - Maryland and Vermont - to link state-level collaboration with local-level collaboration among providers and local organizations and the relationships between collaboration and child care access, utilization, and quality.