A Path to High-Quality Child Care through Partnerships
The Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (Partnerships) initiative brings together the best of Early Head Start and child care through layering of funding to provide comprehensive and continuous early child development and family engagement services to infants, toddlers, and their families, especially working families with earnings below the poverty level. Through Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships, child care centers and family child care providers meet the needs of working families by offering flexible, convenient full-day, full-year services and have access to a rich array of Early Head Start funding and resources, including educational curricula and materials, health, nutrition, family engagement, and staff professional development, which offer enhanced opportunities to support better outcomes for our nation’s youngest learners.
The COVID-19 crisis has revealed both the fragility of the severely under-resourced child care industry and the strengths of the Partnerships model. The challenges faced by Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships, and their responses to the crisis, offer insights into both the immediate and long-term opportunities to sustain and improve high-quality early care and education programs.
Featuring stories from Educare organizations’ Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships across the country, our 8-part series informed by a network-wide community of practice on this topic, A Path to High-Quality Child Care through Partnerships, highlights the impact of COVID-19 on Partnerships grantees, their child care partners, the families they serve, and offers our unique policy recommendations to maintain, improve, and grow our nation’s supply of quality infant toddler child care.
Learn from our Educare Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships:
- Part 1: Hope During COVID-19 and Beyond
- Part 2: Partnerships in Oklahoma Offer Lessons for Recovery
- Part 3: Partnerships Rising Amid COVID-19 in Miami-Dade
- Part 4: Through the Lens of Partnerships: Racial Disparities and Resilience in New Orleans
- Part 5: Partnerships Provide Critical Supports to Sustain Family Child Care in Tulsa and Maine
- Part 6: Partnerships Deliver on Quality Early Learning in Wisconsin and Colorado
- Part 7: New Partnerships Serving as Pillars in D.C. Community
- Part 8: A Path to High-Quality Child Care through Partnerships
- Policy Recommendations
Educare Partnerships Webinar: A Path to High-Quality Child Care Through Partnerships
Our live webinar on July 23, offered examples of how Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships have supported family child care homes and child care centers during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they can help sustain child care businesses on a path to recovery. Click below to watch the recording.
Early Head Start Child-Care Partnerships Resources
- Expanding High-Quality Child Care for Infants & Toddlers│ Overview and Resource Guide
- Lessons from the Evaluation of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships Across the Educare Network: Executive Summary
- Expanding High-Quality Care for Infants & Toddlers: Lessons from Implementation of Early Head Start – Child Care Partnerships in States
- Early Head Start–Child Care Partnerships: Spotlighting Early Successes
- The Early Head Start–Child Care Partnerships: Flexibility with Accountability
- Educare Early Head Start Child-Care Partnerships Program Profiles
