Elsevier

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Volume 47, 2nd Quarter 2019, Pages 111-123
Early Childhood Research Quarterly

A descriptive profile of state Child Care and Development Fund policies in states with high populations of low-income Hispanic children

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.10.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • In many states, CCDF utilization among Hispanic families is low.

  • State CCDF policies may differentially impact program-eligible Hispanic families.

  • Administrative exclusion and accommodation model provide a conceptual framework for how policies may impact utilization.

  • Analysis of CCDF policies in 13 states in which 80% of low-income Hispanic children reside.

  • Policies on eligibility, documentation, prioritization and information availability may impact utilization.

Abstract

The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) serves dual goals of promoting low-income parents' employment, education, and training, and supporting parents’ use of high quality child care and education. While changes in CCDF policies have aimed to improve the accessibility and functionality of CCDF subsidies for all eligible low-income families, utilization among Hispanic families, who represent the highest growing proportion of income poor families, remains low. Our study explores the ways in which the state-level child care policy context may differentially affect utilization among Hispanic families and contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in program utilization. We use the child care accommodation model and administrative exclusion to offer an expanded conceptual framework. We consider how policies and administrative practices may interact with demographic and community characteristics common among low-income Hispanic families and impose differential learning, psychological, and compliance costs for accessing government assistance programs such as CCDF. Our analysis of the 13 states in which over 80% of the low-income Hispanic child population resides, identifies policies around eligibility, documentation requirements, receipt prioritization, and the online user experience that vary across states and may serve to either facilitate or constrain access to a child care subsidy. Implications for the design of child care policies to equitably support economic and child well-being for all eligible families are discussed.

Section snippets

Background: the federally legislated Child Care and Development Fund

The federal Child Care and Development Block Grant Act (1990, 2014) establishes a set of broad CCDF requirements, whereas more detailed program policies and administrative practices are enacted by state and local entities. The federal statute defines an eligible child as one who is under the age of 13, whose family income does not exceed 85% of the state median income and whose family’s assets do not exceed 1 million dollars, and who resides with one or more parents or guardians (hereafter,

The child care accommodation theoretical framework

The child care accommodation theoretical model specifies that families must undergo a series of trade-offs to select and utilize a nonparental child care arrangement (Coley, Votruba-Drzal, Collins, & Miller, 2014; Friese, Lin, Forry, & Tout, 2017; Meyers and Jordan, 2006, Weber, 2011). This theoretical framework and associated research have identified a number of factors that operate at the individual, family, and community levels to impact parents’ decisions about care. The accommodation model

Present study

Taken together, the aforementioned areas of policy regulation and practice illustrate circumstances that can potentially unfavorably, or favorably, influence Hispanic families’ utilization of CCDF benefits. To further examine state-level CCDF policy contexts, this study expands the child care accommodation theoretical model by using the framework of administrative exclusion to examine how state policies can support or interfere with Hispanic parents’ decisions to utilize child care subsidies

CCDF policies and practices in the 13 states

Table 3 presents a summary of the CCDF policy dimensions across the 13 states. The first panel shows the state-level policies we reviewed related to program eligibility. For six of the 13 states (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington), the policy manuals specified that ESL participation is acceptable for CCDF eligibility. Policy manuals for seven of the 13 states (Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington) specified a minimum

Discussion

Expanding on the CCDF’s initial core mission to reduce the child care cost impediment to parental work, statutes have become increasingly focused on parental access to high-quality and more stable care and education opportunities for children. The demographic composition of eligible families has dramatically shifted since the inception of CCDF, with Hispanic families constituting a growing proportion of working income-poor families. Yet, Hispanic families have lower child care subsidy

Conclusions

The aim of this study was to provide an enhanced theoretical framework to better understand the ways in which CCDF policies and practices can illuminate a set of factors that may facilitate or interfere with utilization of benefits among eligible populations across race/ethnicity. Under-enrollment of low-income working Hispanic families in CCDF may reach beyond the candidate family and community ecological factors suggested by conventional theoretical frameworks. States face a variety of

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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    This work has been funded by Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, the Administration for Children and Families, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HHS-2013-ACF-OPRE-PH-0576.

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