Sharing Web Resources-3

Child Care Aware® of America is the nation’s leading voice for childcare. They work with more than 600 state and local Child Care Resource and referral agencies nationwide (Child Care Aware of America, 2014). It is just amazing how this organization is resourceful for the public who needs help. It has a separate website for serving Early Head Start and Child Care Partnership. I explored this particular website and learned that Early Head Start – Child Care (EHS-CC) partnerships were created by the FY2014 Federal budget bill, which provided $500 million to the new program (National Policy Blog, 2014).  This new funding for Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships is an exciting opportunity for communities to plan how they can expand access to high-quality early care and education for low-income children and families (National Policy Blog, 2014). It is good to learn that this year, the White House took notice, with President Obama making expanded opportunities for high quality child care and early learning not just a part of his policy agenda, but a central focus of that agenda so that "none of our children start the race of life already behind” (National Policy Blog, 2014).

I have been subscribing to the Child Care Aware of America’s monthly newsletter. It provides many useful and updated information regarding early childhood education fields. This week, it has something particular that caught my attention and it is also based on this week’s topic. One of the top news of the e-News of Child Care Aware of America was that on Tuesday, June 10^th, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies help a markup on the Fiscal Year 2015 spending bill for the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bills (Child Care of America, 2014). Retiring Senator Tom Harkin encouraged that the bill directs funding to investments in high quality early childhood care and education, which have been proven to have positive, lasting effects on children and families. The spending bill provides combined increase of $348, 327, 000 for key early childhood care and education programs; Head Start, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Preschool Development Grants, and IDEA Grants for Infants and Families. Together they address the entire age of birth through age five.

Other important insight I have learned from the e-Newsletter is that the learning from Internet is getting popular and accessible. For an example, Build Initiative will host webinar on understanding Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership Application on June 12^th from 2:00PM-3:30PM ET. 

                                                                 Reference

Child Care Aware of America. (June 11, 2014). National Policy Blog. Retrieved from http://policyblog.usa.childcareaware.org/2014/06/11/senate-appropriations-subcommittee-approves-funding-increase-for-early-childhood-programs/

Child Care Aware of America. (June 11, 2014). Retrieved from http://usa.childcareaware.org/early-head-start-child-care-partnerships