CEP Public Comments and Responses of Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)
Title: Submission for OMB Review; Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 (ACF-118) and Extension of Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114)
Date Submitted: February 21, 2024
Summary: The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requested an extension without changes of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114, expiration 02/29/2024), and a separate three-year extension of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027. There were changes requested to the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 to improve formatting, collect additional information about program implementation, and streamline questions.
CEP Response: A recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, outlined the historical and contemporary inequities in child care and early care and education more broadly, deeply impacting the workforce, and children and families from marginalized communities. Better data are critical to understanding inequities in opportunity—including well-documented inequities in access to and experiences in child care, and in enabling States/Territories to develop targeted, effective solutions to ensure that all children have equal access to ensure they thrive.
The CCDF plan has the potential to help States/Territories ensure subsidies are reaching eligible children and families in low-income households, and especially those who have been historically and contemporarily marginalized including Black, Latine, Indigenous, and Asian families, immigrant families, families who speak languages other or in addition to English, and families of children with disabilities.
Our feedback is organized around the following sections of the draft Plan:
1 CCDF Program Administration
2 Child and Family Eligibility and Enrollment and Continuity of Care
4 Parental Choice, Equal Access, Payment Rates, and Payment Practices
5 Health and Safety of Child Care Settings
6 Support for a Skilled, Qualified, and Compensated Child Care Workforce
7 Quality Improvement Activities
8 Lead Agency Coordination and Partnerships to Support Service Delivery
9 Family Outreach and Consumer Education
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Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking; “Improving Child Care Access, Affordability, and Stability in the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)”
Date Submitted: August 28, 2023
Summary: The Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) proposed to amend the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) regulations. This notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) proposed changes to lower families’ child care costs, which can be a significant financial strain for families and disincentivize work, training, and education. It proposed changes to improve child care provider payment rates and practices to increase parent choice for child care arrangements and help stabilize operations for participating providers. It also proposed ways for CCDF Lead Agencies to streamline eligibility and enrollment processes so families can receive child care assistance faster and so program bureaucracy was less likely to disrupt parent employment, training, and education and impede access to child care. The NPRM also included technical and other changes to improve clarity and program implementation.
CEP Response: We steep our comments in the overarching frame for an equitable system that was published in the 2020 CEP report “Start with Equity: 14 Priorities to Dismantle Systemic Racism in ECE Systems”. In the report, we describe an equitable system as one that attends to “equitable access”, that is, who gets in the door? Who has access to services? Who has access to resources? The second dimension is “experiences that are fair and positive”, that is, once in the system, service, or program, what are children’s and families’ experiences like? What is the quality of services? What do relationships and interactions look like, and are there differences across groups of children? The final dimension is “outcomes”, that is, what are the results of access to and experiences within our systems? Are there disparities in outcomes by group? How do disparities trace back to experiences and access? (Meek et. al, 2020).
In modifying proposed rules, technical and other changes, we urge ACF to consider ways to expand access to services, across demographic groups, quality of experiences with CCDF services, and meaningful, valid outcomes that result from these services. States have a major role to play across these dimensions under CCDF, and establishing accountability for equity through federal regulations is a critical lever that can enhance children and families’ access, experiences, and outcomes across the child care system.
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Title: Proposed Information Collection Activity; Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 (ACF-118) and Extension of Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114)
Date Submitted: August 27, 2023
Summary: The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requested an extension without changes of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114, expiration 02/29/2024), and an additional 3-year extension of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027. There were changes requested to the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 to improve formatting, collect additional information about program implementation, and streamline questions.
CEP Response: Data on the implementation and reach of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) subsidies are reported in the aggregate, leaving states, the federal government, and the public uninformed about how services are impacting outcomes for particular groups of children, such as children of color, those with disabilities, and those in rural communities. With more refined data reporting requirements and disaggregated data where possible, States/Territories can make fair, data-informed, and relevant policies that directly affect the access, experiences, and outcomes of children and families.
The remainder of our feedback is organized around the following sections of the draft Plan:
Section 2: Promote Family Engagement Through Outreach and Consumer Education
Section 3: Provide Stable Child Care Financial Assistance to Families
Section 6: Recruit and Retain a Qualified and Effective Child Care Workforce
Section 7: Support Continuous Quality Improvement
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Title: Rulemaking - Child Care Facilities; Amend Arizona Administrative Code Title 9, Chapter 5 rules (A.R.S. §§ 36-883 through 36-883.04)
Date Submitted: July 3, 2023
Summary: The Arizona Department of Health Services (DHS), in its 2022 Child Care Facilities five-year-review report, identified that the rules’ effectiveness could be improved by making the rules more clear, concise, and understandable by updating cross-references, correcting grammatical errors, clarifying the language throughout the rules, and removing obsolete definitions and requirements. Additionally, DHS planned to amend and establish rules for school-age children being cared for in a child care facility that only cares for school-age children. This rulemaking could also make changes to improve consistency with the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). DHS received rulemaking approval pursuant to A.R.S. § 41-1039, to amend the rules on May 4, 2023.
CEP Response: Overall, the Children’s Equity Project urged DHS to prioritize children and use this rulemaking opportunity to improve the health, safety, and well-being of children in child care facilities. We believe that DHS’s desire to reduce burden must be balanced with the strong priority to ensure that the intent of licensing is, first and foremost, to protect and support children. We provided overarching and specific recommendations in the following 8 areas:
Clean Water and Mitigating Lead Exposure
Air Quality Monitoring
Water Safety
Ratios and Group Sizes
Discipline and Emotional Safety
Inclusion, Safety, and Accessibility for Children with Disabilities
Children who are Dual Language Learners
Workforce Qualifications and Training
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Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking; “Supporting the Head Start Workforce and Consistent Quality Programming”
Date Submitted: January 19, 2024
Summary: The Office of Head Start (OHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed to add new requirements to the Head Start Program Performance Standards (HSPPS) to support and stabilize the Head Start workforce, including requirements for wages and benefits, breaks for staff, and enhanced supports for staff health and wellness. They also proposed to enhance several existing requirements and add new requirements to promote consistent quality of services across Head Start programs. This included proposed enhancements to requirements for mental health services to better integrate these services into every aspect of programs as well as elevate the role of mental health consultation to support the well-being of children, families, and staff. Enhancements were also proposed in the areas of family service, worker family assignments, identifying and meeting community needs, ensuring child safety, services for pregnant women and people, and alignment with State early childhood systems. Finally, they proposed minor clarifications to existing standards to promote better transparency and clarity of understanding for grant recipients
CEP Response: We strongly support the Administration’s efforts through this rule to boost the compensation and support provided to the Head Start workforce. Without the workforce, there is no Head Start. We provide comments in that section and other key sections, with an emphasis on supporting Head Start programs to more concretely advance equity in their communities and with the families they serve.
The Children’s Equity Project’s comments reflect our goal to expand access, enhance quality, and advance equity in early learning systems, including in Head Start. We firmly believe that equity is quality and quality is equity, and that with the appropriate changes, Head Start can play an even greater leadership role in these inextricably linked areas, supporting children and families across the United States, especially those who have been historically marginalized, including Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian, and other children of color, children with disabilities, and emerging bilingual children from under-resourced communities.