EVALUATION OF MASSACHUSETTS' CHANGE IN CHILD CARE SUBSIDY AUTHORIZATION POLICY

Massachusetts Department Of Early Education And Care, Boston, Ma MA

Investigators

Abstract

In Massachusetts, over 55,000 children rely on subsidies on a monthly basis to access care that would otherwise be unaffordable to them. Despite the positive effects of child care on parental employment and child development, the program is challenged by high levels of instability in subsidy receipt and care arrangements, which can affect parental employment and healthy child development. In response to the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 regulations, the lead Child Care Development Fund agency in Massachusetts, the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), is implementing a 12-month authorization period for all subsidy recipient families, with innovative efforts to minimize mid-authorization reporting requirements for temporary changes in families? work/education/training activities or income, as long as families? incomes do not exceed 85% of the state?s median income. This new policy represents a fundamental change to reduce administrative burden and inflexibility to temporary changes in family?s employment (e.g., seasonal workers), to promote stability of subsidy receipt and care arrangements for children and families, and reduce enrollment instability for providers. EEC and an established team of experienced evaluators will conduct a rigorous mixed methods evaluation that includes a cutting-edge study to rapidly apply early quantitative and qualitative findings to design policy implementation improvements and then test these adaptations with a low-cost, scalable experiment. The timeline and flexibility of the evaluation provide the research team with a unique opportunity to be an integral part of not only the design and implementation of a new policy change, but also the initial planning process of the change and the updating and evaluating of the implementation process over time.The mixed methods study is designed to:1) understand whether the subsidy authorization policy changes designed by EEC are implemented as planned2) examine the impact of these policy changes on stability of subsidy receipt and care arrangements among families and stability of the enrollment of subsidized children among providers 3) identify and test improvements to the policies through ongoing lessons learned during this evaluation.The results of this evaluation will play a critical role in EEC?s future efforts to ensure that the goals of CCDBG and EEC are met. This proposed collaborative research will engage EEC in continuous quality improvement and strengthen EEC?s evaluation capacity. The mixed methods approach will provide empirical results and contextual information that can inform other states implementing the new CCDBG regulations. The study will contribute to a small but growing body of research that uses low-cost scalable experiments to test quality improvement in administrative processes.