Exploring Innovative Early Programs: Four Takeaways for States to Shift Child Care Funding Toward Outcomes

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Over the past four years, Third Sector has supported OEC in strategically allocating and managing federal relief funds to meet the needs of providers and families and, this past year, in preparing for the upcoming decline in federal stabilization funding.

The COVID-19 pandemic strained an already fragile child care system, worsening the impact of low wages on early childhood educators and high child care costs on families. To stabilize the child care sector, the federal government invested stabilization dollars in states through the CARES Act, Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Act (CRRSA), and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The Connecticut Office of Early Childhood (OEC) received more than $350m in federal funding to stabilize and strengthen early childhood across the state. 

Working through managing federal relief funding with OEC, Third Sector has had a unique view into what it takes to mobilize a massive investment and turn it into concrete initiatives that create an impact for providers, families, and communities across Connecticut. Below are a few of Third Sector’s takeaways from this work that other states should consider as they grapple with how to continue resourcing early childhood post-federal stabilization funding:

1. Setting an Equitable and Intentional Decisionmaking Practice: Third Sector encouraged OEC to lean on five key decisionmaking factors:

    • alignment to existing system vision; 
    • balancing short- and long-term impact; 
    • incorporating community voice;
    • blending and braiding funding based on federal guidelines and 
    • engaging partner agencies. 

Being explicit about the agency’s decision-making process will ensure that funding is allocated intentionally and equitably. This will reduce bias and direct discussion to what the agency has decided are the most important factors to address. Transparency in this process also helps providers and families suggest refinements to the process.

2. Developing a Proactive Data Collection Strategy: While the rollout of federal funding limited the planning capacity for many offices, Third Sector still worked with OEC early in the pandemic to determine success metrics or outcomes for individual initiatives and categorize types of initiatives in order to aggregate trends. This helped staff leading initiatives to see how their work was connected to OEC’s larger vision and created buy-in. Setting up this process before contract development and finalization of allocations will mean that states can continually adjust where funding is being allocated based on the impact they are seeing.

3. Documenting Project Management Processes: Identifying and documenting the processes that improved effectiveness and those that hindered progress will allow your agency to scale or adjust those processes in the future. It is never too late to document roles, responsibilities, and actions. OEC did this by drafting a process flow of how initiatives would go from ideation to implementation, including the key decisionmakers, necessary steps, and potential blockers. 

4. Sharing Successes and Challenges: With nearly 100 initiatives and $400m+ of federal funding distributed, OEC had a lot on its plate in simply getting the funding out the door to providers and families. Now that funding has more or less been obligated and distributed, OEC is discussing the importance of sharing a comprehensive account of how funds were spent and the impact it is starting to see. Ultimately, OEC is hoping that bucketing funding data and reporting on trends through a public-facing report and dashboard will enable the following:

    • Creating space for OEC to reflect, learn, and improve on its work;
    • Prompting discussion, impact, and feedback from those most impacted, mainly families and providers, and
    • Documenting what you can achieve when given the opportunity and funding.

OEC’s partnership with Third Sector on Registry improvements serves as a valuable case study on how governments can effectively address their citizens’ growing digital needs through strategic planning, community engagement, and innovative solutions. To learn more about Third Sector’s approach and how it may apply to your context, please reach out to Kesha Lee (klee@thirdsectorcap.org) or Dre Szegedy-Maszak (dszegedymaszak@thirdsectorcap.org).