U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Early Head Start Expansion and EHS-Child Care Partnership Grants
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has announced the availability of approximately $500 million to be competitively awarded for the purpose of expanding access to high-quality, comprehensive services to low-income infants and toddlers and their families through Early Head Start-Child Care (EHS-CC) Partnerships, or through the expansion of Early Head Start services. New entities or existing EHS grantees can apply to use funding to partner with local child care providers to provide comprehensive, high-quality services to eligible infants and toddlers through EHS-CC Partnerships. These Partnerships will enhance and support early learning settings to provide full-day, full-year comprehensive services that meet the needs of low-income working families; enhance access to high-quality, full-time child care; support the development of infants and toddlers through strong relationship-based experiences; and prepare them for the transition into preschool.
Early Head Start programs provide family-centered, full-day, full-year services designed to promote the development of the youngest children; to engage parents in their roles as primary caregivers and teachers of their children; and to help parents move toward self-sufficiency. Early Head Start promotes the school readiness of low-income children in relationship-based learning environments that support children’s growth in language, literacy, mathematics, science, social and emotional functioning, physical development and well-being, and approaches to learning; and through the provision of health, educational, nutritional, social, and family support services.
The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is the primary federal program devoted to providing families with child care subsidies and supporting states, territories, and tribes in improving the quality of child care programs. New or existing Early Head Start grantees will partner with local child care centers and/or family child care programs and will be required to leverage current investments through CCDF or other sources to improve the quality of infant-toddler child care.
Services to be provided include:
- Eligibility, recruitment, selection, enrollment, and attendance, ensuring the most vulnerable children are served;
- Comprehensive early childhood education and development services that promote the physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and language development of young children and families during the early years;
- Family partnerships providing services to parents that: Support their role as parents; promote positive parent-child interactions, including the participation of fathers; and enable families to move toward self-sufficiency;
- Community partnerships by ensuring formal linkages and coordination with community agencies located in the area or state that provide services within the Birth-to-Five Continuum of care and education, to ensure that children receive continuous, coordinated services from birth to school entry;
- Administrative and financial management;
- Transportation; and
- Facilities that meet health and safety requirements and are licensed for infants and toddlers.
Amount: Estimated Total Funding: $650,000,000; Expected Number of Awards: 300; Average Projected Award Amount: $1,500,000 Per Budget Period. Funding is available within each state based on the number of young children in poverty. Applicants are encouraged to use the state allocation funding levels as a guide in determining their proposed funding. The amount of base funding available in New Mexico is $4,098,708. Base funding is for use in program operations, staff, materials, equipment, facilities, etc. In addition to base funding, applicants should request an additional 2.5 percent of the base funding for training and technical assistance (T/TA) funding. T/TA funding is used for the purposes of improving program quality and helping prepare children to succeed in school.
Eligibility: Eligible applicants are any public entities, including states, or non-profit or for-profit private entities, including community-based and faith-based organizations. In New Mexico, applicants that propose services in the following zip codes (high poverty areas) will receive competitive priority: 87013, 87026, 87045, 87049, 87052, 87062, 87305, 87311, 87313, 87319, 87323, 87326, 87327, 87328, 87365, 87375, 87937, 88047, 88048, 88063, 88072, 88081, 88340.
Link: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/open/foa/view/HHS-2015-ACF-OHS-HP-0814
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