EXPANDING THEPOSSIBILITIES EXPANDING Implementing the Child Care and Development Block Grant Reauthorization: A Guide for States Hannah Matthews, Karen Schulman, Julie Vogtman, Christine Johnson-Staub, and Helen Blank THE CENTER FOR LAW AND SOCIAL POLICY (CLASP) advocates for public policies that reduce poverty, improve the lives of poor people, and create ladders to economic security for all, regardless of race, gender, or geography. CLASP targets large-scale opportunities to reform federal and state programs, funding, and service systems and then works on the ground for effective implementation. CLASP’s research, analysis, and advocacy foster new ideas, position governments, and advocate to better serve low-income people. THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S LAW CENTER (NWLC) is a non-profit organization working to expand the possibilities for women and their families by removing barriers based on gender, opening opportunities, and helping women and their families lead economically secure, healthy, and fulfilled lives—with a special focus on the needs of low-income women and their families. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This guide would not have been possible without the generous support of the Alliance for Early Success and the Foundation for Child Development. We are also grateful to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Early Childhood Funders’ Collaborative, Ford Foundation, George Gund Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, Irving Harris Foundation, JPB Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Moriah Fund, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and an anonymous donor for their support of the child care and early education work at CLASP and NWLC. Karen Schulman is Senior Policy Analyst at the National Women’s Law Center; Hannah Matthews is Director of Child Care and Early Education at CLASP; Julie Vogtman is Senior Counsel & Director of Income Support Policy at the National Women’s Law Center; Christine Johnson-Staub is Senior Policy Analyst at CLASP; and Helen Blank is Director of Child Care and Early Learning at the National Women’s Law Center. The authors thank Judy Conti, Olivia Golden, Maurice Emsellem, Joan Entmacher, Agata Pelka, Rhiannon Reeves, Tom Salyers, Beth Stover, and Christina Walker for their assistance with the report. The authors extend a special thank you to the many advocates and policymakers who helped inform the content of this report. While the authors are grateful for all assistance and funding related to this paper, the authors alone are responsible for its content. © 2015 CLASP © 2015 National Women’s Law Center Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................... 1 Purposes and Select General Administration Provisions ........ 7 Consumer Education and Provider Compliance with Health and Safety Standards .............................................. 12 Consumer Education ............................................................. 12 Enforcement of Licensing and Other Regulatory Requirements ........................................................................ 15 Establishment and Enforcement of Health and Safety Requirements ........................................................................ 19 Criminal Background Checks ................................................ 21 Child Care Program Standards and Quality Improvement Activities ............................................................... 25 Activities to Improve the Quality of Child Care ...................... 25 Early Learning and Development Guidelines ........................ 28 Professional Development and Training Requirements ........ 29 Family-Friendly Policies .............................................................. 33 Meeting the Needs of Certain Populations, Priority Populations, and Parental Choice ......................................... 33 Eligibility Determination, Redetermination, and Protection of Working Parents ........................................ 35 Family Copayment Policies ................................................... 40 Provider Payment Rates, Policies, and Practices .................... 42 Conclusion .................................................................................... 46 Appendices ................................................................................... 47 NATIONAL WOMEN’s LAW CENTER & CLASP IV IMPLEMENTING THE CHILD CARE AND DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT REAUTHORIZATION: A GUIDE FOR STATES NATIONAL WOMEN’s LAW CENTER & CLASP Introduction IN November 2014, Congress reauthorized shifting resources to comply with the law in a way that THE CHILD CARE AND Development Block GRANT causes children and their families to lose child care (CCDBG),1 the major federal child care program, for the assistance. This guide suggests strategies for maximizing first time since 1996. This reauthorization presents a the opportunities presented by the law and minimizing promising opportunity for states to help families access negative consequences. In addition, the guide safe, reliable, affordable child care that allows parents to demonstrates how additional resources can enable work and promotes children’s healthy growth and states to realize the full potential of the law for helping development. The legislation includes critical provisions children and families. to ensure the health and safety of children in child care settings, improve the quality of care, and make it easier What THE Research SAYS: for families to get and keep child care assistance— How AN Improved CCDBG CAN HELP strengthening its dual roles as both a major early childhood Both CHILDREN AND Parents education program and a work support for low-income The reauthorized CCDBG recognizes that child care is families. By giving states more flexibility to structure a two-generation support and advances the dual goals policies around the needs of children and families, the of child care assistance and child care itself: supporting reauthorization also makes it easier to link the child care parents’ work and promoting children’s healthy assistance program to other programs, including other development. Child care assistance helps parents afford early childhood education programs and additional reliable child care, which can help them gain and maintain supports for families. stable employment; for example, one study found that single mothers of young children who received child care To take advantage of the opportunity offered by the assistance were 39 percent more likely to still be employed reauthorization, and fulfill the goals of the legislation, after two years than those who did not receive any help states will need to be strategic and thoughtful about paying for child care.2 Research also demonstrates the implementation, including paying careful attention to importance of high-quality child care to children’s resources. States should: development: studies have shown that children who • Determine their broader goals in implementing have attended high-quality care perform better on tests of the new law; cognitive skills, language ability, vocabulary, mathematical 3 • Identify the full set of changes they need to make to ability, memory and attention, and social skills. their current policies to meet those goals; and These two goals—helping parents work and promoting • Assess the financial and other resources necessary to children’s well-being—are interrelated. When parents are overcome the gap between their current policies and able to work and earn a steady income, they can offer their their goals for the implementation. children more stability, opportunities, and resources. Families can live in better neighborhoods with better A piecemeal approach to implementation that lacks a clear schools, provide nutritious meals, and buy books and toys vision could result in policy decisions that do not add up to that allow their children to learn and explore. And when meaningful change for families—or worse, could result in parents have peace of mind that their children are in child states making tradeoffs that harm families by, for example, IMPLEMENTING THE CHILD CARE AND DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT REAUTHORIZATION: A GUIDE FOR STATES 1 NATIONAL WOMEN’s LAW CENTER & CLASP care that offers a safe, nurturing environment, they are in which parents seeking help to pay for child care face more likely to be productive at work, and thus more fewer barriers. Key provisions in the new law support likely to stay employed and possibly even advance to the following objectives: a position with higher pay.4 • Protecting the health and safety of children in care As states implement the reauthorization law, their policy through more consistent standards and monitoring decisions should be centered around these two important of standards. and complementary goals of supporting parents’ ability to • Improving the quality of care, including through work and promoting child well-being. increased supports for child care providers. • Enabling families to more easily access child care NEW Opportunities assistance that supports stable and continuous care The new CCDBG law recognizes the need for a new and that can be coordinated with other programs vision of child care in the United States: one in which all (see Table 1). children have access to higher-quality child care, and one Table 1. Key CCDBG Reauthorization Opportunities Opportunities Provisions Protecting the health and • Establishes minimum health and safety standards, including pre-service safety of children in care or orientation training and ongoing training for providers