Center to Support Research and Evaluation Capacity of Child Care and Development Fund Lead Agencies

The Description, Estimated Publication and Application Due Dates, Estimated Award Date, and Grantor Contact Information have been revised. - The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is soliciting applications for a 5-year cooperative agreement that will fund a Center to Support Research and Evaluation Capacity of Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies (hereafter referred to as "Center"). Specifically, the Center will build research and evaluation capacity in the child care subsidy policy field by facilitating information sharing, learning, and collaboration across ACF-sponsored research partnerships funded by OPRE. The Center will be expected to organize learning communities for at least four different ACF-sponsored research partnerships grant programs. The Center will help to ensure that the research conducted by the sponsored research projects informs CCDF Lead Agencies and the child care and early education policy research field more broadly, and will increase knowledge on child care subsidy policy topics through synthesis and analysis of research and data. This Center will ideally bring together a team that has experience supporting CCDF Lead Agencies research and evaluation capacity building as well as expert level knowledge of the CCDF program and policies, the child care and early education research literature including the effects of early care and education on children's school readiness and parental employment, an understanding of the needs of low-income families, as well as the policies and practices that support equitable access to child care. The grant recipient will be funded through a cooperative agreement.

This 5-year cooperative agreement will fund a Center to Support Research and Evaluation Capacity of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies (hereafter referred to as "Center"). Specifically, the Center will support and facilitate cross-project learning among the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation's (OPRE) grant recipients including (but not limited to) the Child Care Policy Research Partnership (CCPRP) grants. The Center will also support learning among CCDF Lead Agencies and the child care policy research field more broadly through synthesis, analysis, coordination and translation of the research conducted by grant recipients. The purpose of the CCPRP grant program is to support collaborations between CCDF Lead Agencies and researchers to investigate questions of immediate relevance to local and national child care policies and practices. Although the focus of the grants may differ across cohorts of child care policy research grantee recipients, broadly they are designed to increase our knowledge about child care subsidy policies and quality improvement initiatives that are intended to support employment and self-sufficiency outcomes for parents, increase low-income families' access to high quality child care programs, and promote positive learning and school readiness outcomes for children and support for child care providers. The Center will be expected to: support cross-project communication through convenings (learning communities) on topics of common interest to build research and evaluation capacity and knowledge; facilitate collaboration across projects to develop common research questions, measures, and analyses; and synthesize and disseminate learning across the individual grant recipients to inform implementation of policies, initiatives, and practices related to the CCDF subsidy program at the local, state, and national levels. This Center will ideally bring together a team that has experience supporting Lead Agencies research and evaluation capacity building as well as expert level knowledge of the CCDF program and policies, the early care and education research literature including the effects of early care and education on children's school readiness and parental employment, an understanding of the needs of low-income families, as well as the policies and practices that support equitable access to child care.