
ECD: The Latest
April 30, 2021
5 Things You Need to Know
April 29th marked the First 100 days of the Biden-Harris Administration.
In this Issue:
- Check out the latest ACF Family Room Blog from ECD
- ECD: The Latest Live - Virtual convening Registration
Five Things You Need to Know
- The largest investment in child care in U.S. history is made.
- More than 6 million early childhood educators and teachers get vaccinated in March.
- Head Start grantees will start to receive $1B funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
- Executive Orders focus on addressing COVID-19 and racial equity.
- Latest Resources
This is Our Moment: Transforming Child Care through the American Rescue Plan and Cross-Sector Partner Engagement
April 30, 2021
By Katie Hamm, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Early Childhood Development
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve heard from countless child care providers who have gone to enormous lengths to keep their doors open, using personal credit cards; dipping into personal savings; and even forgoing a salary themselves to pay staff. And they’ve done this while risking their own health to care for our country’s children. Essential work happened throughout the pandemic only because our child care providers made personal sacrifices. Read more here.
ECD: The Latest Live - Virtual Convening Registration
Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Time: 3:00 pm ET
The largest investment in child care in U.S. history is made.
The Office of Child Care released $39 billion in child care funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, which will help hundreds of thousands of child care providers keep their doors open and support millions of children. We also released $10 billion in child care funding that Congress passed in December 2020 and released guidance.
More than 6 million early childhood educators and teachers get vaccinated in March.
More than 6 million early childhood educators and teachers get vaccinated in March.
With the CDC and early childhood partners, we launched a national outreach and social media campaign (#Sleeveup4HeadStart and #Sleeveup4childcare) for early childhood educators, featuring child care provider videos. The social media campaign reached more 8 million people.
A CDC survey drew 40,000 responses from early childhood education staff and nearly 80% indicated they received their first shot!
Head Start grantees will start to receive $1B funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Head Start grantees will start to receive $1B funding from the American Rescue Plan Act
These funds will support Head Start programs in the return to in-person services, summer programming, family support, health and safety, facilities improvements, transportation and more!
Executive Orders focus on addressing COVID-19 and racial equity
The Office of Early Childhood Development established a federal interagency working group with 14 offices across the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education to coordinate in support of reopening early childhood programs and supporting those that have. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we released updated guidelines for child care centers and family child care homes to prevent COVID-19 spread and shared updates with Head Start grantees and Child Care and Development Fund Lead Agencies on reopening safely.
We’re collaborating with colleagues across HHS to identify policies and practices that support racial equity, and we’re supporting the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force.
Full Text Executive Orders:
Voices from the Field
California family childcare provider tells why she got her COVID-19 vaccination and encourages other educators to get vaccinated, too.
Office of Early Childhood Development
ECD acts as a catalyst to create collective impact and support early learning and care of our nation's children and their families. This newsletter is for early childhood field catalysts and our partners in this work.
Email: earlychildhooddevelopment@acf.hhs.gov
Website: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ecd
Twitter: @ecdgov