Comment: Child Care & Development Fund State Plan Draft
Senior Policy Attorney Renee Murphy, on behalf of Children’s Law Center, submitted comments to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) regarding its proposed Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) State Plan draft for Federal fiscal years 2016-2018. The CCDF was created to ensure that children from low-income working families have access to affordable early care and education each month. In addition to sponsoring child care subsidy programs across states, CCDF works to raise the bar for quality by supporting licensing efforts, funding system improvements, and subsidizing training and technical assistance that benefit child care providers.
In her comments, Renee recommends OSSE use new tools allowed by the revised Child Care and Development Act of 2014 to strengthen the DC Early Intervention Program to increase the supply and ability of child development centers to meet the needs of infants, toddlers, and school-age children with disabilities. Another recommendation she makes is for OSSE to create a regulation prohibiting child care providers from suspending or expelling children, short of extreme safety issues, and to expand the Department of Behavioral Health’s early childhood mental health consultation program.
Click the link below to read her full comments.