CONTEXT: CCDF plan renewal 

The Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) Plan is a federal funding application for the Child Care Development Block Grant, administered by the Administration for Children & Families (ACF) Office of Child Care (OCC) within the US Department of Health & Human Services. For a period of 3 years, the CCDF Plan helps states, territories, and tribes use funding to help low-income families receive access to child care.  

Various components of the CCDF Plan include child care affordability; eligibility and enrollment; payment rates and practices; workforce support; continuous quality improvement (CQI) activities; and parent education, engagement, and outreach. The plan outlines how states, territories, and tribes will administer funds, ensure compliance, and enhance access and availability of child care.  

Maryland’s child population is diverse, and 32% of children ages 0-18 have at least one immigrant parent. Additionally, approximately 1 in 6 children live in working families who meet Maryland’s qualification for “low-income”.  As such, in designing the new plan, the State wanted to ensure that it met the diverse needs of every child and family.  

GOALS: Conduct an equitable process toward equitable outcomes 

Through this project, we supported the Maryland State Department of Education–Divison of Early Childhood (MSDE-DEC) to: 

1. Conduct a gap analysis of MSDE-DEC’s draft CCDF State Plan based on federal statutory requirements. 

2. Facilitate community engagement opportunities to inform the state’s CCDF State Plan approach and content, with a focus on engaging priority populations. 

3. Develop final recommendations for the State Plan based on outcomes from the gap analysis and community input. 

APPROACH: Establish shared definitions and center those most impacted 

Afton first sought to understand how the MSDE-DEC team defined success for the project, the extent of prior work conducted to engage communities, and the priorities for further community engagement. The MSDE-DEC team wanted to ensure that the final CCDF plan centered equity in its efforts to increase equitable access and quality to: 

• Providers serving infants and toddlers, 

• Providers in rural areas, 

• Children and families with disabilities, 

• Multilingual families, and  

• Historically marginalized populations.  

Establishing a clear understanding of the client’s definition of equity and their priority populations enabled our team to effectively review their draft of the CCDF Plan. It also allowed us to conduct community engagement through the shared equity lens, centering the experiences of those farthest from opportunity.  

GAP ANALYSIS 

To ensure the outcomes of the gap analysis resulted in a federally compliant state plan, Afton began by developing a review rubric based on the CCDF’s federal statutory requirements. Each of the draft plan’s 10 federally required sections were reviewed for: 

• Completeness: Have all required components of the question been answered? 

• Responsiveness: Do the responses address the information requested in the question? 

• Clarity: Does the response provide a clear understanding of the Lead Agency’s CCDF requirements?  

• Compliance: Is the response allowable and does it fully meet the requirements of the Child Care and Development Block Grant CCDBG) Act? 

• Consistency within the Plan: Is the response consistent with similar/related areas of the plan? 

• Consistency with known state activities: Has the state included all activities relevant to the question, based on what the Office of Child Care is aware of from other reports on CCDF activities? 

At the outset of the process, we created tools to strengthen MSDE’s capacity to capture and manage feedback across a range of agency contributors, including a review rubric, feedback log, and tracking log.    

Throughout multiple rounds of reviews, the team kept the focus on the community engagement efforts. MSDE-DEC’s emphasis on centering equity and amplifying the input of priority populations served as a guiding lens for Afton to identify missing components of the plan and the community insights we needed to learn from to close gaps.  

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 

Living into MSDE-DEC’s commitment to centering equity in the plan, our team identified opportunities to strengthen equity in the plan’s engagement processes by implementing engagement best practices to maximize community input. The meetings became key platforms for gathering insight, with carefully designed questions addressing gaps in the CCDF Plan draft and centering the lived experiences of priority populations identified by MSDE-DEC. 

Collaboration with advocacy groups and community-based organizations (CBOs) further enriched the process. Based on their experiences participating in engagement sessions, several groups volunteered to host focus groups with their networks of providers and families to capture more input on the CCDF plan. This expanded engagement led to robust input from diverse stakeholders, including Spanish-speaking family child care providers, educators, and families. 

To facilitate broader participation, the team also collected asynchronous input, resulting in 334 individual comments that were synthesized into themes and combined with findings from the community engagement sessions.  

Recognizing the power imbalance between state team members and advocates/providers, we prioritized the confidentiality of community members and adhered to MSDE’s guidance on stakeholder engagement and information gathering. We also elevated the input of Spanish-speaking family child care providers, who have historically faced barriers in accessing decision-making forums, state funding, and high-quality care. Our efforts aimed to bridge opportunity gaps within the ECE landscape, particularly for those facing the most significant barriers to accessing high-quality care. 

FINAL REPORT  

The final client deliverable report elevated findings from community engagement meetings, provided recommendations based on findings, and identified gaps and recommendations to improve the CCDF State Plan draft.   

You can access the final report here. 

OUTCOMES: Strong engagement leads to better-informed plans 

“The partnership with Afton was very impactful because it allowed stakeholders to address any concerns they have with MSDE in a safe space. MSDE intends to now take those concerns and use them to implement fresh ideas on how to work with stakeholders and better our customer service.” – MSDE-DEC client feedback 

Our work culminated in a final report and recommendations for incorporating equitable best practices in ongoing community engagement to foster stronger relationships with advocates and providers. 

In partnership with MSDE, Afton engaged a diverse range of community members within a short timeline to develop the MSDE CCDF State Plan. Despite a tight timeline, successful engagement of families, providers, and advocates led to a well-informed final product that will center the human experience and achieve more equitable distribution of funds. We integrated several community engagement best practices, including offering multiple methods for feedback, providing sessions in Spanish, and leveraging relationships with advocates and CBOs. This project reaffirmed that even within constraints beyond our control, it is always possible to incorporate practices that foster true collaboration, and that a little goes a long way.